Hello,
I just received my new bit, a 1/4" shank v groove bit 90 deg. Got it from eBay for like less than $10 I believe, anyway, moving on. I made a name design in a script font that I wanted to try my bit on but when it came to confirming bit size, it said it was too big for my design and i needed to make it bigger or choose a different bit. So I guess my question is, how do i get to use my v-groove bit?
Are you using Easel?
Currently, Easel does not support v-carving. You would have to use something else…consider:
F-Engrave (free) - F-Engrave
V-Carve (not free) - http://www.vectric.com/
yes i am, only one i can afford since it’s free 
You will need to trick easel by telling it your bit size is .03 inches.
Just be sure you keep the depth of the cut fairly shallow.
Thats how i started
And what happened the first time?
After a few test cuts with adjusting the depth things started looking pretty good. I did find that as long as you use a image with a uniform line width it comes out pretty good. Measure your image line width then go up the vbit to find the same width then measure from the point of the bit to the point where the vbit is as wide as the line and that will be the cut depth. A lot simpler and faster than it sounds. If you scale the image size you will need to change depth. After doing it a few times you can pretty much guess where you need to be.
Hats off to you for working that out. But using software that understands a vbit sure is lots easier (and will look amazing)
F-Engrave is free and it does a very good job of cutting letters and carving line vectors
http://www.scorchworks.com/Fengrave/fengrave.html
http://www.scorchworks.com/Fengrave/fengrave.html#documentation
You will need to load a copy of Universal Gcode Sender http://bit.ly/1hftIhy
to send the gcode that F-Engrave creates to the X-Carve
This was what i used to do when i first got the machine have upgraded vastly since that time. Used to do something like that with the human powered version of a cnc the good ol router duplicator.
Hi, I downloaded, looked at but did notice it does a have a limited amount of fonts. I tried looking for the font folder, no luck. I am thinking of uninstalling it and reinstalling and making little notes as to where everything is. I did notice several versions to dl and was a bit over whelmed as to which so I just did my best and dl’d the one I thought was right. Well I will give this a try once more. I really have some nice idea’s floating in my head and would like to see them on wood, not as advanced or fancy as some people I have seen, but I am sure one day I will get there.
Thanks for all the help and input from everyone!
so basicly the width of the v groove bit will be the width of what ever it is I want to have done, letters, line, etc, correrct ?
Not exactly. The vbit is cone shaped. The wider the vector the deeper the bit cuts.
