Fusion360 - Negative Extruded text/svgs

I want to carve something with a tapered ball end-mill which I can’t just go the easy route and have Easel calculated the gcodes since it doesn’t do ball nose bits (or tapered I think). So I’ve got the design created in Fusion 360 but I’m struggling to figure out the correct type of toolpath to use. I think maybe pocket… but I get errors and warnings that make me believe it won’t result in a full carve. I tried with a smaller bit and it just gets the final error on the screenshot below without the warnings.

These are all just pockets 0.25" deep. I could probably safely raise them to 0.125" deep.

Any tips on how to get good tools paths? Alternately something other than Fusion 360 that has a free option and would handle these 2.5D work well with tapered ball nose bits would be interesting. Fusion 360 on this type of carve seems like using a CNC to cut a 6" length off of a 2x4.



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It looks like Fusion 360 is probably complaining because of the chosen tool, toolpath(s) selected, and the inability to actually generate successful toolpaths to cut your design. You can try lowering the ramping constraints or switching to a straight plunge if that is what is causing it, but it could just be that the bit is too wide to fit into some of the area to be cut.

I would probably carve that using Easel’s V-Carving ability. You will get much crisper corners in all of your letters, the ring, and the other angular features shown.

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Brandon Parker

Thanks. I’ll have to see what I can do about the plunge.

I did a test carve with v bit already you’re right, it looked okay sharp. I’m planning to try filling it with epoxy and was thinking that deeper channels would have a substantially better bond. Intellectually I know that the epoxy will bond just fine, but having varying thicknesses might also change the look if the epoxy is translucent.

did you make a 3D design with extruded parts, or is the design currently all Flat?

Your Pocket with that bit would probably work if you made the design a solid 3D body first. I helped someone new to Fusion360 convert his Easel sign to a Fusion360 one and here is how I did that, you could do something like this for yours and then use your TBN for the toolpath, one thing to know though is that TBN’s are typically used for 3D relief style carves and your design would normally be carved with a standard v bit in order to get the perfectly crisp inside corners…

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