VCarve and drilling

[spalm]

Hey,

Just trying out the demo. Looks good, I think I will buy. Heck, I’ve spent more on less.

I imported a dxf file that a friend of mine has be been bugging me about. It is a pick guard for a guitar that he is restoring. He sent me the attached file. Not really a V carve thing, but seems like something it should handle. It is to be cut into 1/8” plastic. All the routing should be done with a V bit, so it has a nice chamfer on the edges.

It seems to me that the outline, large holes, and rectangle box should be done in 2D with the setting set to ON line. The small holes are for #6 flat head screws. Is there some way to tell VCarve to just lower the bit to cause a chamfer to match the chamfer of a #6 screw? It does not really need to route anything, just lower the bit to the right distance. Kind of like a drilling operation.

Steve

[Dman]

Steve,
I own Vcarve and it is a great product to have. I think to answer your question about making a chamfer hole you could do the following. Select the holes that you want to make with the chamfer. Turn off the "flat depth" in the vcarve toolpath and make the selected v-bits cut deeper than normal and it will just drill a hole without making a circular move. I tried this by making a .25" circle in vcarve. Selected it and used a 90 deg vbit with a .2" depth per pass and it just placed a dot in the preview for the toolpath. Hope this makes sense.
Damian

[spalm]

Thanks I’ll give that a try.

Couple more questions since I have your ear:

Is there a grid available for drawing?

I don’t get it, where the software spent time at first install converting fonts, but I see no way of entering text.

Steve

[Dman]

No grid for drawing that I know of. I've only had the software a few weeks so if you want email Tony Mac and see if he can give you an answer. He is very helpful. I make all my text in Inkscape and then save it as .eps file and paste it into vcarve. Inkscape woks very well by the way if you don't already have or know about it. The trace function is as good or better than Corel. With text though it will just save it as an .eps without tracing and goes into vcarve very well. If I want to use a curved text, I use desk engrave and save as dxf and then import that into vcarve. I think the new version of vcarve that is due out soon may have more text options. You may want to post your questions on the Vcarve Forum on the Vectric site. Someone on there will be able the answer all your questions. Hope this helped.

[BrianM]

Hi Steve,

The 'Converting Fonts' message that you see when installing VCarve Wizard is part of the EPS/PDF import capabilities. Generally with PDF files there are about 20 'standard' fonts which are often assumed to be present on a system and hence the vector description for them is not included in the PDF file. VCarve Wizard builds these character descriptions from the fonts installed on the system once when it is first installed to speed up any subsequent import of files which rely on these font descriptions.

Version 3.0 of VCarve Wizard, which all registered users will receive free of charge when it is released, will include support for entering text.

Brian