radius on a vector

[tracys]

I am making a jig for cutting butterfly inlays using a handheld router. I have made the jig. When I made the drawing I only drew one corner, I then mirroed it to keep all the corners the same. Now I am trying to cut out the inlays using Aspire. Here is what I have done so far. I used the vectors that I used to create the jig. Reduced the size by half the distance of the bit and bushing. This should have given me the same size as the pocket. I then reduced the offset allowance by about -0.015". I got a nice fit everywhere but the corners. You can see in the picture how much it is off.

Is there a better way to make the pocket. Or is there a way to edit just the radius corner on the actual vector.

I am using Aspire 3.504. on Aplha Shopbot.

[steve_g]

Tracy...
Did you use the "offset vector" tool? What router bit diameter did you use? any chance your smaller radius landed up slightly smaller than the radius of the bit?

I would suggest you use the "create an inlay" tool... that way the software should make sure the radii fit together.

SG

[gerryv]

Tracy, My son ran into this same problem a few days ago doing a file for me and lost over half a day. He drew a "corner" shape, mirrored it once, combined them and mirrored them again for his four corners but noticed that things didn't quite line up, leaving open vectors. On a hunch, he then flipped the three copies back to the original corner (not sure if I worded that right) and discovered that they didn't align perfectly as they normally would in a program like Illustrator. Maybe it's a quirk of the program? so hopefully someone experienced will offer some insight because we're wondering about this too.

[tracys]

Steve, I've used that feature before and it works well. I need this jig to do some inlays on some fairly large uneven slabs. So I could use the handheld to create the pockets and CNC in punchout all the butterflys.

I made the vectors for the butterflies 2 different ways. 1st I used the resize, locking x and y. 2nd I offset the vectors half the distance of half the bushing. In the second the size is too loose, but if I slowely increase the size it looks like it may be a nice fit. (trial and error) I am using a 1/4" down spiral for both the pocket and butterfly. The bushing is 3/8 on the outside.

[tracys]

Gerald

I thought the same thing. But i thought by using the original vectors, if I was off, it would fit at least one way nice. I will go back and look that the corners line up. Good tip.

[gene]

Does the radius in the corners match the radius of the rub coller on the hand held router. ? Maybe its not fitting in the corner of the jig all the way