Fine Detail carving

Just got my Carvey a week or so ago and have enjoyed it so far. It definitely is a lot different than using a scroll saw where my previous skill set lies.

Got a question on fine detail carving.
I get a bit of breakout on the wood when when it is very thin stand up piece like you have on some of the fonts. Is it best to slow down or speed up the feed rate when this happens? I am aware it has a lot to do with the wood grain and things will vary on that but I am using Mahogany, Purple Heart, and Walnut.

In the picture below I used poplar as it is far cheaper to test on. You can see the break out in the lettering.

image

Any advice would be much appreciated.

What type of bit are you using?

1/32 spiral upcut. I am guessing it is just too thin but wanted to see if there was any settings I could play with to possibly improve it as the design really cannot be much bigger.

A vbit will give you better results.

ok cool will try that out. Thank you.

Thank you both for your assistance I have ordered both a set of V bits and downcut bits.

I’m looking at getting a carvey for making pretty intricate cuts in plaster of paris blanks. I can’t find anywhere how fine of cuts the carvey makes, does anyone know where I can find that? Thanks

Josh

It really depends on the bit size and software you are using. One thing that I have found that is completely annoying with Easel is that if you draw just a straight line even if you select on path it wants to go around the line instead of just going back and forth.

As far as how fine of detail basically double the width of your bit and that is the smallest detail I can get Easel to cut reliably. The Carvey doesn’t do what I bought it for but I chalk that up to having much higher expectations. I do a lot of scrollsaw work and didn’t realize how hard it would be to emulate that with the Carvey.

According to Inventables:
Accuracy: 0.003″
Spindle runout: 0.001″
Motor resolution: 0.001″ or greater on all axes
Work area flatness: ±0.020″

This isn’t true. How are you drawing your line?

Ok I stand corrected as when I last tried it with the fountain pen icon previously it was going around the path instead of on it giving me a cut twice the diameter of my bit.

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Thanks guys, looks like this will be plenty detailed for what I need, now it’ll be the long learning curve to figure it all out.
Josh