I’ve been trying to cut a small stamp out of some wood. Currently I was trying to cut it in Aspen or Poplar, I think. It’s just text of “{ r }” in a script font. It’s surrounded by a box about 27 mm wide and 10-12mm tall so CamBam can do a pocket cut and leave the letters raised. I’m using a bit R0.25D3.17515*38mm from this set https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N7S00BH/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. The issue is that even though I’ve made the text bigger and bold the raised parts break away as it’s cutting.
Does anyone have any tips on cutting small detail stuff? Would a different wood work better? Have the grain a certain way? Slower speeds?
How thin are you expecting the walls of the raised features to be ?
Do you have a photo of what you have been able to get thus far or what you’re attempting to get ?
Your end mills are tapered. Which is good since they are more solid, especially for a radius of 0.25mm. However, depending on how deep you’re going and the software used to generate g-code, it is removing more material near the surface than at the bottom making top of the ‘walls’ thinner than you might want and what the material can handle without becoming too fragile.
Slowing down feed and reducing depth of cut will help reduce any of the pressure being placed on the thin walls during milling… But with tapered bits, try to not go too deep if you want lots of thin details …
What I do is create a drawing with small detail and experiment with different spindle speeds, different feed rates, and different depths of cut with the bit I want to use. You should find something that will work. Hope this helps.
IMO, for detailed stamp neither of those woods is good. Grain is much to thick for any detail. MDF or Rubber Stamp material. I have some from Inventables. The engraving layer is not that deep, so you are limited in depth, but with a .5mm bit, I would imagine you aren’t going deep. I have made a number of larger stamps (with some detail) out of MDF. I had “break off” issues at first as well. I now have a better process that I adjust based on detail level.
Here’s my recommendations…
Try MDF
Very Light passes and slow it down. As you learn, you will figure out how fast you can go based on the design.
Only go as deep as you need. I generally stamp with Latex Enamel, so I do go a bit deeper, but if I’m doing detailed stuff, I use thinner stamping inks or stencil paint.
Use a stepped approach. Go deeper in roughed-out sections so ink has a place to go but don’t go as deep in the detail sections/passes.
I just read the details on size and bit etc. That is extremely small and detailed. I would definitely look at using Stamp material. Art stores usually have Stamping Block blanks.
Tapered end mills are like Vbits with a bull nose (or flat tip in some cases) instead of a sharp tip. It would be best to have the software handle it like Vcarving. This would automatically make a shallower cut near tight details and deeper in open areas with fewer details …
Here’s nice video of someone flattening PVC pipe to make stamps, using free software as well :
Try reducing your “stepover” on the cuts as well. This is the amount that the bit moves over for each cut. Also try doing a rough pass and then a finishing cut. Don’t know if your software can do that, but F-Engrave can, and it’s free. Also, definitely MDF or even PVC will work better. With MDF, since it’s so porous, try giving it a few coats of thinned polyurethane before engraving to help hold it together.
I may be going too deep and I’m going to try and make it shallower. MDF is a good idea and I wouldn’t need to seal it. This is for stamping into clay. Hence the small size, too much bigger and it will not fit on some pieces. PVC is a good idea too. I was mainly using that wood since I had it and I was just test cutting. Thanks guys.