Burn Stamp: Raised Letters on Brass

[coryatjohn]

This was an interesting project. I've never done raised letters and I've never worked with brass. Two new things. Pretty rare these days.

I ran into an issue making raised letters. There is no toolpath that I could see that would make them. V-carve toolpath makes cut-in letters only. Maybe I missed something there. Pocketing out the background to leave a raised letters was the only thing that had possibilities but when I tried to go full depth with one tool path, this is what I got:

32563

Obviously, not any good. So I tried just doing a bit at a time, in this case, 0.01" at a pass and creating a toolpath for each successive bite into the brass. I wanted to go down 0.07" so that led to seven tool paths. I combined them into a single path and ran the file. Here's the results in Aspire:

32564

I used a 60 degree V-carve bit, one I had obtained from another SB'er who sent me bits to be sharpened and the result was this stamp:

32565

(2" wide, 1/2" thick bar stock "Machining" brass)

When heated with a torch and pressed into wood, this is how it looks:

32566

This was my first attempt and in the future, I'll roll it back and forth a bit to give it a more even depth. The worst part of the job was the smoke that came out of the wood and got in my eyes! Shouldn't have been standing directly over the darn thing. My bad there.

Question: Any better way of making raised letters with a V-carve bit?

[chiloquinruss]

I am by no means an expert at this but . . .Since your signature says you have Aspire here is how I would approach this task. Russ
Look at the example:
http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=32567&stc=1
First I would POCKET the OUTSIDE of the letters to the INSIDE of the rectangle
http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=32568&stc=1
Then I would VCARVE on the LINE the outline of the letters to the same depth I pocketed the rectangle
http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=32569&stc=1
You will need to experiment with depths so that they match the width of the letter parts. IE if the width of the vertical part of the T is .25 I would start with a depth of half of that or .125 for both the POCKET and VCARVE.

Like I said I am no expert. Have fun I hope this helps. Sometimes you have to just step back and let Aspire do the work! ;) Russ

[coryatjohn]

I am by no means an expert at this but . . .Since your signature says you have Aspire here is how I would approach this task. Russ
Look at the example:

First I would POCKET the OUTSIDE of the letters to the INSIDE of the rectangle

Then I would VCARVE on the LINE the outline of the letters to the same depth I pocketed the rectangle

You will need to experiment with depths so that they match the width of the letter parts. IE if the width of the vertical part of the T is .25 I would start with a depth of half of that or .125 for both the POCKET and VCARVE.

Like I said I am no expert. Have fun I hope this helps. Sometimes you have to just step back and let Aspire do the work! ;) Russ

That would work if the font was large and each letter had continuous width. I used a truetype font and the width of the letters varied and was quite small. The finished piece as only 2" x 3". The method I used worked satisfactorily.

It seems there is a bug in Aspire. It should have been smart enough to handle the full depth tool path since it worked by creating a separate tool path for each pass. If this was a more complex project that had a deeper cut, it might have gotten tedious to create so many tool paths but in this case, I only needed seven.

Thanks for looking at it though.

[zeykr]

When I did it, I used a vcarve toolpath with flat depth. Just set an outer 'border' vector sightly larger than the material so it pocketed it all away but the raised letters.

[coryatjohn]

When I did it, I used a vcarve toolpath with flat depth. Just set an outer 'border' vector sightly larger than the material so it pocketed it all away but the raised letters.

Yup. That worked. Will remember for next time. Thanks!

[coryatjohn]

I made another stamp using the V-carve toolpath. Worked better. Oddly, I broke the tip off the bit in the first two minutes. This same bit ran fine for the two hours it took to carve the first stamp. I ran a tiny bit deeper with the V-carve toolpath (0.011 vs. 0.010) but other than that, everything was the same. After sharpening the bit back to a nice point, I cut the speed in half (6 ips to 3 ips) and the job ran to completion without breaking anything.

Here's the resulting chunk of brass:

32594

[khaos]

Look at prism letters in aspire. Or you can use the modeling feature and extrude the letters from the 3d surface.

Example I did recently using the extrusion method.

http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=32595&stc=1