V Bit Carving Issues (ridge in middle of cut)

I recently have been fooling around with V carving and filling with epoxy. In my first tests things went great. Couldn’t have asked for much better results. I felt pretty confident with using the final project and moving forward. Once I secured the board on my X-Carve I cut away. Right off the bat I noticed issues. One, my bit must be dulling because I am now getting tear out, but my biggest issue (and the one I can’t solve) is that I now have a thin ridge that the V-Bit is leaving in the center of the thin areas of the text.

From what I have assumed, the depth of the V carving is determined by the width of the lines being used to define the boarder? Is this correct? Also, the degree of the bit is a factor. Smaller = Deeper. With this in mind, I have tested bits with different bit settings to see what the results look like.

This project is also very small. It is approximately 1.5" tall and 2.5" wide. I need it to be deep enough to fill with epoxy and not sand the engraving out when Clearing the epoxy.

I can’t figure out why I am now seeing a thin strip not being carved out in the thin areas of the text. Also, this is not a single line text.

Is this some anomaly? My machine is pretty dang square. My settings are very conservative. It worked once so why is it not working now?

Is there a way to make the V carve go in a single pass on Aspire even though it is not a single line text? The first pass is pretty good. It is the second pass that is causing the issue to appear. It’s almost like the bit is hugging the lines of the vector instead of splitting them down the middle. The toolpath preview shows the line being centered.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!! I am so frustrated at this point.

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Similar issue to this right?

  1. Measure your bit width with calipers. Make sure the actual size matches what you are setting it as in aspire.

  2. I’m not too familiar with aspire but there should be an option to decrease step over of the bit.

I will definitely do the measuring when I get home on Tuesday. I dropped my step over all of the way down to 1% to see if it changed anything, but it didn’t. Hopefully changing the measurement for the bit might help. I’ll post my findings Tuesday.

I have been cutting tamarac deck boards and had been getting those little ridges and some tear out with a v bit as well.

Wasn’t an issue since it would not be seen with where it was going. I was tinkering with the machine recently and snugged up the lower eccentric nuts on the x axis carriage to the point I thought they might be a bit too tight. All my ridged and tear out went bye bye.

Double check those eccentrics.

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There is a thread on the Vectric forum about testing your vbit to be sure the angle you think it is is actually the angle of the vbit. The sample given is for a 90 deg bit but it is easy to change the file to any other angle

I have had some issues with my eccentric nuts. I had a new carriage added to my cart the other day but didn’t pull the trigger. When I assembled my X-Carve they bored out the hole the screw goes through a bit. I tried putting a washer on there to see if it would help and still allow the but to function but didn’t have any luck. I checked them after this issue and they seemed tight. Maybe another check is required. Thanks for the suggestion!

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Okay, so, I think I have it figured out. This whole time I have been welding the letters together. I must have originally left the letters as individuals and that produced the original “correct” carve. After all of this measuring, tightening, etc…it was something as simple as that. When you weld letters together it doesn’t calculate your depths and widths the same as if you leave them a individual vectors. I feel like an idiot. This has been a two week ordeal.

If you learned something about this activity we have all become infected with, dont feel like an idiot.
You were merely inexperienced. With so many options of machines, upgrades, modifications,SOFTWARE, etc, etc, this sort of thing will inevitably happen.

so how do i make them individual? trying to make a board of formulas for my class but it leaves the ridge in all my letters. tried different bits, font and speed to no avail.