Messing around with halftone carving

I have one with lines ready to go to my machine, but I wanna do a trial one first. Do u have any suggestions thus far for good results as far as material and colour application? And do u do urs in 1 pass or use the 2 pass button?

That looks great!
I found that the close holes were getting frayed and kinda pushed together on my crap whiteboard I had, but u can’t tell from further than 2" away lol
I Really like how ur pic there; the colour of the wood really almost makes it look like the skin colour and I had to look twice lol

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@PhilJohnson

So I am confused what do you set the

Engraving Depth to?

and also when the Orgin x and y are set to zero where does the tool path start from? the lower left corner or the center?

Engraving depth is the depth of the surface color of your material. If you’re using a painted or stained board, just set it to zero. If you’re using a real two-layer material, like engrave-able plastic, you’d set it to the thickness of the top layer. It is an offset added to the depth of every cut to make sure it plunges through the colored surface material.

Origin is always lower left. With an X-Carve machine you probably want the origin offset to be at least 0.75" in X & Y to clear the probe / clamp area. This only affects the generated GCode output.

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@JasonDorie

very nice okay thanks

is there anyway to set it to the lower right corner or the center of the work piece?

or would it go like this?:

material size: 9.5" h x 11.5" w

For Lower right corner:
Origin X= 9.5
Origin Y= 0

For center:
Origin X= 4.75
Origin Y= 5.75

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I wasn’t sure if it was moving the origin or the work piece around

Saying origin and then specifying a value I was hoping that would change the origin position

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Well I guess I screwed something up this is supposed to be in regular melamine particle board but its not showing any of the white all the holes are overlapping

I am using a wood grain contact paper but the white is underneath that

Uploading…

@PhilJohnson

yeah its malimine particle board

and no I used .020"

and no it was clean when it contacted my touch probe

Here is with the depth set to zERO BETTER PERHAPS?

@PhilJohnson

SO if you are engraving like say 2 color hdpe and the top layer is .060" thick and you set your depth to say .060" to engrave through it won’t you run into the same problem that I was running into on the first carve because more of the tool is in the material all the holes are over lapping?

or is it a case where the deeper you go the more spacing you have to add to the dots? but won’t that loose detail in the engraving?

@PhilJohnson

So idk I set the depth to zero and it started to show a image but its not very good at all


And yeah i was using the contact brand film and your right it is not working good I am not sure what I am doing wrong there I have quite a few issues with the film not cutting clean I wish I could figure that out

Maybe I am using the wrong tool?
Maybe I do not have the rpm right?
Maybe I am trying to run the machine to fast? (100ipm for this halftone)

I also think that I need to increase the spacing I had it set at .125" but I might need to take it to .145 or more I just lose the detail though

and the carving once the film it removed is extremely rough and little bits of wood break off

what settings do you use for spacing ect.

also maybe I was trying to do to small of a piece its 11.5w x 8.625 for that spacing

Unless you’re using a special multi-layer material with a top layer that has real thickness, set the engraving depth to zero.

Are you using a V-shaped bit, and did you tell Halftoner what angle the bit is? If you’re using a 90 degree bit and telling Halftoner it’s a 60 degree, for example, it will plunge much deeper than it should.

Halftoner assumes that the zero is the surface of your material, so if you’re setting zero lower than the material surface that could also be a problem.

Spacing should be slightly larger than the maximum hole size, unless you’re using the “Offset odd rows” option with dots mode, and then you can use a spacing that’s just slightly smaller than the max hole size.

Take a picture of the bit you’re using (or just post the specs for it) and screen shot the panes for settings and toolpath and post them here. The results you’re getting are quite odd, for sure.

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Offsetting gives you a little extra space in only one of the directions (vertical). I should probably change this to be a more optimal packing, but you can see the effect pretty clearly if you just load a pure black or pure white image, then play with the different settings at really low res. For example:

Without offsetting odd lines:

With offsetting odd lines:

From these pics, it should be very clear that a 5mm spacing with a 5mm hole still has the holes for a single row touching, but between rows there’s a little more space with the offset enabled.

@PhilJohnson

SO here are the settings that I used


Did you offset odd rows?

No I didn’t offset the rows

Spacing can then be slightly smaller than the max size.

Did you probe?

what do you mean by probing? Touch Plate to set z?

Post a screenshot of your image and settings.

Posted!

@JasonDorie

Here is the tool that I am using just a standard v-bit .5" 90deg


I set the tool angle to 90deg

@JasonDorie
@PhilJohnson


lol :horse: :gem: :gear: :ear:

nevermind thats not tool related !

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I’ve been told that the XCarve does better if you work in mm instead of inches. The Halftoner UI will convert everything for you, so once you have the settings you like (in inches) hit the mm button on the bottom to export in mm.

Aside from that, everything looks right. And yeah, the “Angle” is the angle of the lines or dots, and that’s different than the “Tool angle” which is the measurement of the bit. You will find that a narrower bit is more forgiving - Using a 45 degree or 60 degree bit isn’t as sensitive to material flatness or bowing as a 90 degree bit is.

@JasonDorie

okay yeah i am going to try some different things here tonight

and I really don’t use my x-carve anymore its getting turned into a dedicated laser cutter

I am using my CNC Router Parts PRO4896 for this project

Looks good so far



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jeez that sure does take awhile lol its about half way through and I just sped it up to 200 ipm we will see if that goes any faster

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it seems to be doing fine at 200ipm I would what 400ipm would do I should see how fast I can get it lol in theory I should be able to go 1000ipm

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