Engraving Letters and Artwork with a CNC Router

Here is a great CNC project. Couple of things are pretty cool about this. This is a maple bird's veneer over a Walnut backer, and that really makes everything pop. Now what'll happen here is we're gonna look at engraving the lettering, bringing artwork in from the worldwide web and making that artwork compatible with the vector format that we need. Lot of information that make this happen, create the oval.

In fact, here are all the things that you're gonna learn as part of this CNC video. Let's have a look at V curve and what it's gonna take to make our family tree is full of nuts Plaque. The veneer aspect of this doesn't affect our programming here. Let me just talk through that for a second. What I did was simply used maple veneer and glued it over a Walnut backer so that when we go through the veneer, it shows the Walnut underneath and really helps the lettering and the image pop-up what we wanna do with this is create an oval, get our lettering in here, and then also look at what's it gonna take to pull an image off the internet and use a tree like that.

Step one, looking at the software, we're gonna create a new file. So over here on the left side, that's pretty simple. Create a new file. When we do that, we get options up here that let us set the dimensions of our work, and it's critical that we get this right, so that the work is the work piece is correctly spaced inside our blank. In this case, the width, the X axis of our piece is 13 inches that's actually the length of my Walnut and maple combo.

The height, the Y axis is 11 inches. Now coming down a little bit, we can set the thickness of our material. What's gonna happen with this is that when we're all done in order to get this plaque out of our backer board, we're gonna allow the router to cut all the way through. As a result we need to be pretty careful about setting this thickness so that when we tell it how far to cut, so it penetrates it's gonna do that correctly. So I actually measured this with digital calipers and that told me that the thickness was 0.87.

That's a number you want to be pretty careful about. The dimensions above, within length. We've got some wiggle room there coz our oval is quite a bit smaller than the board we're cutting it from so that doesn't have be as finite. As we moved down here, this X, Y data more complicated than it sounds. That just means what do we wanna call the 00 of this X0 Y0, as it sits here right now, it's set at the center of our board is the center of our workpiece.

We're gonna switch that so that the lower left-hand corner is our 00 and then our project is coming out from there in this direction. That's gonna vary project by project. Really can set that up a lot of different ways, but this lower left-hand corner X0, Y0 is what's gonna work for this one. Now our project calls for an oval. If you've tried to make an oval in your shop, you might find it's a little bit difficult to do.

Here we can take advantage of the software and make it pretty darn simple by clicking on this, which is drawn ellipse. When I do that, it allows me to choose the center point of the ellipse. And then also the dimensions of the ellipse. Let's do a little bit of math in our heads here. The board is 13 inches long, 13 inches in the wide direction.

Half of that is 6.5. It's 11 inches did I just say that? Right? It's 13 inches in the X direction. Half of that is 6.5.

It's 11 inches in the wide direction. Half of that is 5.5. So if I pick that as the center point of my ellipse, it's gonna center that on my board. Then I can come down here and I can choose how wide I want the ellipse to be, how long I want it to be. So in the X direction, we've got a 13 inch board, so let's go 10 inches long in the wide direction.

The height of it, we're 11 inches high. So let's go eight and let us see what that looks like. There's the one there's an ellipse that we created for right now. And what I'm looking at, does it look okay? Is how much room do we have around the outside?

Plenty of room for the bit to cut. We have to leave room out here to screw this down to, oops, got an accidental ellipse there we go. We have to leave room to put some screws in here and that's, what's gonna secure us to the spoil board. So this looks pretty good. Now, if you get this far and you decide, well, Gee, I wish I'd made my oval just a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller, we can do that once I click on it and I get these layout squares, I can drag it bigger.

And what does that look like? Well, we've lost our centering position because I dragged it by hand and that's not a big deal because if I come back over here again, let's take advantage of what the software offers. I can come over here to align objects center in material and it perfectly centers oval in my work. So that makes things pretty simple. Now let's talk about this artwork.

What I did is I went out to the internet and I found what looked like a cooler looking tree for our plaque. And I brought that into my picture folder. And from my picture folder, now I'm simply dragging it in to V curve. Now, the problem with this is that this is a JPEG or some other picture format it's not necessarily a format that the computer is gonna recognize as something, it can cut. These are not vectors.

So what we need to do is change this into something that the computer will recognize easier than it maybe sounds. I'm gonna highlight the art and coming over here to my menu, I'm gonna use this one that's called trace bitmap. And what's cool is we're not actually tracing the computer is gonna do that for us. So now I get this menu and I can do this to black and white. I can do it to color I can change parameters here to tighten or loosen the parameters that it assigns the vectors to.

So let's preview with what we've got here. And what this shows me is that the black lines, these new black lines are my new vectors that I just created. And that actually looks pretty good. So I'm gonna hit apply and then close. Now the problem I'm up against right now is that it's possible so when I clicked on this, there's a vector C where it turned pink.

This black line over here did not turn pink. When I click on that one, it turns pink. So in other words, I've got a bunch of separate things, separate lines right here, right now. I wanna make this easier to work with and make them all one. So I'm gonna select everything by pulling that square around it, let go, then come back to my menu and I'm gonna group everything.

And this has given me a message that only vectors can be grouped. And that's okay. So when I click on this and it highlights and I move this out of the way, I'm moving the vectors that I just grouped together. What's left behind is the original image. And we don't need that anymore.

So we're just gonna hit the keyboard delete and it goes away. So that's how we can bring artwork in and make it compatible with the software here so that we can use it. Once we have it in this form, I can shrink it, I can expand it, I can get up here on a corner and I can spin it and orient it in different directions. If we do that and screw up, you can always come back to edit undo and it'll you back to where you were. So let's just manually resize that for now I'm not too worried about it.

Now I'm looking at this is that centered? Is it in the workpiece where it should be? Well, what's the easiest way to make that happen? Take advantage of our software, align objects, center in material. Now the oval is centered on my work.

The tree is centered on the work everything is concentric now to be fair to my centering options, I don't have to center the material. There's all sorts of different alignment options you can choose there depending on what it is you're trying to do with the work. Looking at our finished plaque we've got text on here. And one of the things that's neat is the text conforms to the shape of the oval. So let's look at making that happen.

We need a guideline oval in here that's gonna be just a temporary thing to help us lay out the text real easy way to make that happen. Click on that outside oval so we computer knows we're gonna use it. And I'm gonna come over here to this offset tool, an offset selected vectors. When I click on that I get options I can offset outwards, inwards, both change the amount. Bottom line is it's gonna reproduce what we've got this set distance away from the first one.

So I'm gonna leave that at one inch let's see how that looks. That looks pretty good. We got a second oval one inch from the first one important to understand this is only here so we can lay out text. As soon as we're done with this step, it's gonna go away we're gonna keep the outer oval that's the outside of our plaque. Now in the world of text, what we need is one line that says my family tree.

And just so that, you know, it exists 80 bazillion different kinds of texts, lots and lots of options here for funds. We're gonna stick with this Garmin for now as we come down, we can change bold italic alignment, size of the text anchor point. Where is the text gonna be placed? I'm not too worried about this right now because we can always drag and drop the text to where we want it. So let's go ahead and apply.

Now, it's putting the text down here at our anchor point. That's why it's way at the bottom of the screen, anchor point being 00 our origin, but that's okay. Let's just pull that up to approximately where we want it. And then second verse, same as the first, my family tree is, and apply. And there's our new text.

Now to make the curve, we need texts and we need a curve to conform it, to kind of click the text, hold the shift key and click the curve. Now this option gives me the opportunity to wrap text along a curve. And this is worth playing with there's a lot of different options in here that are gonna produce different results. So, here I am below the curve hit apply. Let's see what that does.

Okay. And I can slide this text around. So positioning I'm not too worried about coz I can pull it over here. So that looks all right, then let's hit my family tree, wrap text Now I'd put it above the line, but the curve is going the wrong way. scan cave sort of instead of convex So simply undo.

Let's try another option here. Now it's on the outside of the curve, so that's gonna work okay I can make that work by taking that oval And dragging that around. So we're gonna get a little bit different layout here, and this is kind of cool. I'm gonna get rid of the oval delete. Bring this one down this way and this one up this way and allow them to sit opposite each other like that or I can continue to spin that around.

That's more of the configuration that we had on the original so I'm just trying to show you here that one, if the software doesn't produce exactly the result you want, you can continue to manipulate it until you do get what you want. Remember, we've got a lot of different options in the software so there's a lot of different ways that we can pull this together. Now good question. We've got our tree centered we've got the oval centered as our text centered, let the software do the work for you. It can come over here to our centering.

If I sent her on material, this is gonna go a little bit Kerflooey coz it centers on the material. That's not what we want undo we wanna know if it's centered, left to right. So we'll pick a different option this one centers it only in the extraction, tiny little nudge on it. Same thing here, center it only in the extraction. Tiny little nudge.

Now, looking at this, I'm gonna make one more adjustment here I feel like my text is a little small and not quite on the right curve yet. I like that more better. So it is nice how it gives you the opportunity to design here, to manipulate things in order to get exactly what you want. Let's go back and hit our centering again, center and only the extraction center and only the extraction. Here we go.

Now we're ready for some tool work. So we're gonna cut this and this and this and this So first step let's pick the letter's family tree hold the shift key is full of nuts, coz those are all gonna use the same cutter. And up here on my tool path menu, I clicked on toolpath here. I'm gonna click on that pin and that holds the menu in an open position while I'm doing all this work. So it's not constantly going back and forth.

We're gonna come to V curving or engraving. And when I look at this, it's currently using a 60 degree cutter. Let's see what our options are. Generally we're gonna do this with some kind of a V bit I can choose any one of these in order to make this happen. They'll have slightly different effects.

So we'll go ahead and choose 60 degree V bit, 60 degree half-inch flat area clearance tool I just unclick that. That's in a case where the letters are really, really, really big and we wanna to use a different bit in order to excavate wastewater out of there in this case, it's not necessary. So that's why unclicked it. Now, when we come to the bottom, I like to name the files with the bit that I'll be using. I like to make them descriptive.

So once I get to the machining step, it's easy to tell what I'm looking at here. So this is 60 degree and it's used for the text. Then let's calculate and see what we're getting. The blue and the red are showing me the tool path that doesn't tell me too much but if I come here and I preview the toolpath, it actually does a cut. Now with text, especially one of the things you wanna look at is with this cut.

Am I getting everything? So it can happen that with a V bit or depending on the cutter we choose maybe a dozen to get a detail. If a portion of the letter is so narrow that the tip of the bit won't fit in there, you'll see that at this stage of the game. And we could go back and click on the text and make it larger. Maybe we could use a smaller bit there are other options we can do to make sure that everything is gonna work.

So here, when we do the virtual run, this is your opportunity to check that and make sure it looks okay. Now on our tree, because it's got so much detail in it. I want to use a little bit smaller cutter, but we're basically just gonna engrave that as well, but let's go to a smaller bit. We're gonna go to a 30 degree cutter. It comes to a sharper point.

Change my file name to 30 degree tree and let's see how that does for us. Preview that tool path. Now, if you don't like how that looks, we can undo. We can change our options if I double-click on the file, I can change the bit size I can do different things or I can highlight it that was a left click, right click gives me a menu, I could delete. Now it goes away completely tree Maybe it would work better with an engraving so we can try that 30 degree.

So it's one of the things that's cool about this is because we can do this virtual cut We can see what are the results gonna be preview of my selected tool path. Now I don't like that quite as much I like the other one better. So we're gonna undo last and then I'm simply gonna go back to the engraving cut that we did earlier. Still have the tree highlighted. We still have our 30 degree bit All we have to do is change the file name.

Let's try that one one more preview looks cool. Now, when that's all done, we're gonna cut this out. We're gonna let the router do that for us. So we're gonna highlight the oval on the outside and this is gonna use, what's called a profile tool path. When I pick this, it gives me the opportunity to change cutters.

We're gonna do that we're gonna use a quarter inch bit for this. We also have to know how deeply to cut. Remember I said, it's important to know very finitely how thick your material is. It was 0.87 So here, we're gonna cut to 0.90 that means we're gonna cut all the way through our piece. Now choose our options here When we cut on the outside, cut on the inside cut So the cutter straddles the line in our case, we wanna cut on the outside.

Now what's gonna happen If we just cut, Cut, cut, cut, cut. And we cut all the way through this plaque is gonna come loose of this board and that's gonna be a problem. So we're gonna use what are called tabs here to hold it in place. Let's edit our tabs and see what we get add tabs. This is gonna give us four tabs that leave a bridge, a connection between the plaque and the board.

If you look at this and you say, well, I kind of don't like the tab there. I kind of want it over there. Maybe that would work better. For instance, if a tab appeared right on the corner of a piece that could be awkward to get rid of later so we can slide the tabs around. We can add more, we can reduce them, We can edit those to change how many tabs we're using file name this is 0.25 as the cutter we're using.

And I'm gonna call that EXT for exterior. Now let's calculate and we get a warning. Our board is 87000 right? 87,000 thick. But we're gonna cut all the way through we're going to 0.9.

So it's telling us, are you sure that you want to do that? And we do cause we wanna separate the two. So that's okey-dokey and we can preview one more tool path here and see if this looks like it's gonna work. And that looks pretty good. We can see blue that tells us we cut through.

We can see tabs. Now, if I put the mouse here and I click and I roll, that allows me to pivot the piece and get a view with three-dimensionally and that helps me with the depth of cut. Just helps me see what's going on here. Now, our last step, once we're this far is gonna be to simply save our files to a flash drive so that we can transfer them to the computer that drives the machine I'd save our tool path pretty simple. I'm gonna click on it, gonna come up here to this thing that looks like a floppy and says save tool path.

Now we need to pay attention here on our post processor. A number of post processors are included with the software. It's like different drivers for different printers. I'm gonna pick the one that we're gonna use. Save toolpath.

Now what I want to do is get to my flash drive there we go. And what I like to do is get the file name in here And create a folder. So this is the family tree project. Then open that folder. I'm gonna go back this currently says 0.25 exterior.

I didn't think that was the file I was clicked on. So I'm gonna go again. Just wanna make sure I get this right. Family tree go into the same folder that's good. Going to the same folder All right.

So now we're safe we've got the right post processor. We were ready to take this out to the CNC. We're ready to get set up here on the CNC in order to make things happen. Now, first thing we got to do is secure our work. So let's have a look I've got some of that work already done.

We have our maple veneered Walnut board. And what I did is way out here on the corners. I pre-drilled screw holes and I'm simply screwing that into the spoil board. That's this piece of MDF and the spoil board is just like the name sounds, we're gonna constantly be cutting into it, drilling holes into it, doing different stuff here. So it's no problem at all that I'm running those screws in there.

You just got to make sure that I've got them well outside the perimeter of our work. And knowing that we're way out there on the corner, that's gonna be fine for our oval shape. Regarding the machine, I've already got my 60 degree V bit in there So that's the first cut that we'll do. Now, what we need to do is we've got to tell the machine where that 00 is and remember that we decided, I decided that 00 was gonna be the lower left hand corner of the board. So first step, I'm gonna come into the software that drives this particular machine, and I'm gonna manipulate it in a wide direction and extraction and a little bit of Z to get it closer to my work.

And I'm just gonna jag it until I get it over this lower left-hand corner of my material. And then I'm gonna tell the computer, I'm gonna tell the software that that's my X 0 and my Y 0 so I'm controlling that here in the controller for the machine. Next thing we need to do is control the Z 0, and that's gonna be done with a touch plate. So let me get out over my work a little bit and raise my Z a little. So the touch plate is a device that's electrically connected and what's gonna happen is it can detect when the router bit touches the touch plate the software knows exactly how thick that plate is that then in turn tells it where the surface of my material is relative to the router bit.

So we'll go ahead and come back over here, detect our touch plate. And this'll be a yes. And we're set to go. So now we're zeroed X, Y, and Z, and we're ready to cut. We've got to do just a couple of things yet.

I'm gonna raise this so I can get my dust shroud on it Then we have to bring in the file. So on this machine, it's called load G code. That's this option over here and remember how we made our file names really descriptive. That's where this helps I know it's the 60 degree cutter. That's in the router column.

So 60 degree texts, that's the file that we're ready for we'll open and then choose the option to run file. And all the machine is doing right now is it's bringing that code in. It's getting ready to go with that command. We're ready to run That takes care of a phase one of our cutting, which means we're done with the V bit. So next step what's raise our Z a little bit here and that's gonna allow us to do a bit change.

Next thing we're gonna do is go to the tree cut, which is a 30 degree cutter. Changing a router bit here is much like changing bits on a router. We've got to curl it We've got a curl knot on the collar knot is loose. I can remove the bit insert my new one. So I'm gonna tighten this up, bring my touch plate back in.

Now it's important to recognize that we haven't changed our X, N Y 0 points. We're only affecting our Z 0 points. So we don't need to read 0 X and Y and in fact, you don't want to because unless you hit exactly the same spot, that's gonna change the registration between the cut we just did and the one we're about to make. So all I want to do at this point is redo my Z with this bit. And like I said, touch plate, touch it down Bring this file in and we can cut the tree.

Now, something I'm gonna do, I'm gonna leave that dust shroud off the tree cut on this program doesn't create a lot of dust. And this is gonna give you an opportunity to better be able to watch exactly what's going on. What do you think? That's pretty cool. That engraving detail that we got in our family tree.

So we're gonna kind of repeat the process here. I'm gonna raise my Z Change cutters. Now we need the quarter inch bit that allow us to cut that outside perimeter. And then our plaque is gonna be done after we hit the Z axis again. And this is a messy cut I'm gonna go ahead and run the dust shroud on this one to keep our environment kind of clean, but let me do our Z first Let's clear the head out of the way.

Here's what we've got. Everything is still kind of intact because we've got our tabs in there, but you can see there's a cut from the front and our cut from the back that allows those tabs to be in place. So next step is I would take this to a bandsaw and I would trim outside here, leaving those tabs in place. And then you can sand them off. You can use a flush trim router bit to remove them, but they do a great job at keeping this secure until you're ready to separate it.

Our family tree being full of nuts plaque came out pretty well, had some great skills taught in this video. Hope you have a chance to put them to use in your shop.