Make your CNC signs stand out from the rest
Using a lesser know toolpath to make your designs stand out more from the normal pocket and v-carved designs. This lesson applies to Vectric VCarve and Aspire.
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Video Transcript:
If you have just a little bit of experience with CNCS, you are probably familiar with the pocketing toolpath, and you could see that will pocket out your shapes. And you may even be familiar with the V carving toolpath, which will do basically the same thing, except this one will give you the angled edges, and this one is considered a two and a half dimensional toolpath just because of that angled edge.
So the top one is two dimensional. This next one is two and a half dimensional. So these are both great toolpaths that are used a lot, but one toolpath that is often overlooked is the texturing toolpath. And this toolpath can cut your letters as well, except you can add a little bit more design to your projects.
So if we preview that one, you could see how much that one stands out compared to the rest. And this is just a simple example of what you can do. You could do much more with this as well. So in this quick tip, I'm gonna show you some simple steps on how you can create toolpaths that look just like this. So first off, we're gonna start with a brand new project.
I will set this one up as 20 by 20 inches and three quarter inch thick. You can set it up for whatever size project you're working with. I would recommend zeroing from the material surface just so you get a nice consistent depth from your top of your material. And then you can zero your X and Y wherever you prefer.
I prefer the bottom left hand corner, and then we'll click okay. All right, I'm gonna show you how to do this with some simple shapes, but you can make complex shapes as well. So let's first add in some text. So for the text, I'm just gonna write texture, and you can size it, whatever size you'd like. I'm gonna keep it this size here, looks actually pretty good. So I will move this down here, click close, and then I'm going to add a shape as well. So let's add a star and I will draw a simple star up at the top here, and then click close. Okay, as you can see, I have a simple closed vector shape as well as some simple text.
Also, a good thing to mention here is your text, you want to have a lot of area in between the lines. So this is the impact font,this works really well. You'd wanna try to stay away from fonts, like fine cursive ones, maybe like this one here, you would not be able to fit, uh, too much texture in those, so those will not work as well. So I would recommend a more bold font like this, impact works pretty good.
So I'm gonna click close. So now what I'm going to do is hold shift and select all of the shapes that I want to add texture to. Which in this case will be all of them. And then I'm going to go to what's called the VectorTexture Tool. And this tool allows you to place texture inside of whatever shapes you select.
So you have a form here, you can play around with these settings to get them exactly where you want. You can change the angle, you can change the max spacing between the lines, as well as give it some variation. You can change the wave parameters, and you can also add some noise if you don't want nice smooth lines, and you would prefer more messy lines.
And then finally, what I like to do is check the box down here to place the vectors on a separate layer. That way it's a little bit easier to keep your project organized and you can select the texture easier if you had to later. So I just named the layer texture.
And then we can set up our settings up here. So for the max spacing, a lot of times I will use the diameter of my tool. That generally works out pretty good, but you can also play around with all of these settings to get different textures. You can even just use whatever's default here and just click preview and you'll see right away what it looks like.
Now, just keep in mind if you have a very slow computer, this may take a long time to render depending on how your settings are. So if your computer's really slow, I would recommend turning the noise down, that will help with the rendering speeds. But also try to save your project before rendering these, because in the past I've had my computer crash by trying to render this texture.
So just keep that in mind. Okay, so once we do this, we can zoom in and you'll see the texture will flow in between the shapes that are next to each other and even the shapes that are above and below. So you can imagine the texture being on this entire project, but then it's like a cookie cutter that cuts that texture out into the shapes that are on top of the project.
So that's basically how this is going to work. And then you'll see whenever you change something, let's say we change the angle and then click preview, you'll see then your texture would go at an angle as well. So like I said, you can play around all of these settings just to see the kind of differences you can make.
But once you're happy with the way it looks, just click okay. And then you'll see in your layers. You will have the original layer with all of the vectors on it, and then you'll have the new layer with just the texture on it, so that will allow you to keep those separated if you need to. With that done, we are going to go over to our toolpath tab, and then we're gonna use what's called the texturing toolpath.
And this toolpath will be available in VCarve Desktop, VCarve Pro and Aspire. So we can click on that and then you're gonna select your tool. So there's many different tools you can select for this toolpath. You can use ball noses, which is the most common one. You can use a v-bit, which is also another common one.
You can even use endmills, but those aren't as common. And you can also use like form tools and engraving tools. In this case, I'm gonna use a quarter inch ball nose. The start depth is going to be zero because I'm starting on the surface of my material. And then I'm going to check this box that says, use selected vectors as pattern, so I can either just select the texture as my pattern, or I can hold shift and also select the outlines as my pattern as well.
And by selecting the outlines, that will carve an outline around the shapes, which makes them a little bit easier to see what they actually are. So after you do that, the only options we have now are ramping at the start and end, and that would kind of fade your texture on the ends.
And then you have the option to change the max cut depth. So this is another measurement you could play around with. So I'm gonna go a 16th of an inch for this one, and then you also have the option to vary that. So if you leave this slider all the way to the left, that would put no variation. And then it would be a consistent depth that you set up here all the way through your project.
If you wanted to vary the depth, you can move this slider to the right, and the further right you go, the more variation it would give you. And then, of course, all the way left will give you no variation. So that's something you can play around with as well. And don't worry about getting these settings perfect right from the start, because you can go back to these and change them if you need to.
So then we're gonna come down here, we can give it a name if you like, and then click calculate. Okay, and then you will see the toolpath that it gives us. And then if we click preview,
you can see just like that. Now we got some text that has some nice texture into it. And this could make your signs stand out from a lot of other signs that are out there. Now, some things to consider here is like this letter U, that thin piece you have in there, depending on your material that may want to chip out.
So you'll have to be careful with areas like that. You may want to either change the font where this is a little bit wider there, you can do some node editing as well to make that a little bit wider. But just keep that in mind for stuff like that. But otherwise it looks really good, especially this star, you should have no issues with that.
So that's just one example of using the texture. I will show you one more quick example and what is more commonly used for is the background of your projects. So we can actually make the opposite effect on this. So I'm going to reset the preview. I am gonna go back to the 2D view.
I'm gonna hide this texture, and then I'm going to select both of these shapes and I'm gonna go back to our drawing tab and I'm going to make a boundary using the boundary create tool. And I'm gonna try this one inch, we'll see what it looks like. Okay,that doesn't look too bad. We are gonna have to weld this all together.
So we're gonna click close and then you're gonna click weld. And there you go, now you'll have a boundary around all of your shapes. The only thing is that little piece there we don't need. So I can just select that and delete it and then zoom out and you'll see we'll have just a boundary around the outside.
You don't have to do that boundary, you can also do a simple rectangle or whatever shape you'd like. And I also just realized I had the texture layer active, so that placed it on the texture layer, and brought back my original texture. So I'm gonna right click on this and I'm going to move it to layer one, and then I'm going to hide that texture again.
And now we'll see just our outline and our shapes in between. So now if you select both of those, the shapes in between and the outline. And then go back to the texture tool, and we can even use the same exact settings, except I'm gonna place it on a different layer this time, I'm gonna put it on texture number two, and I'm gonna click preview.
And now you can see by selecting the outline as well as the inner shapes, it places the texture on the opposite sides of the lines. So that will give us an even different effect to our final product. So let's click okay. And of course you can play around with those settings as well if you like. But then we're gonna go back to the texture toolpath.
And if we select all of our shapes, again, we're gonna use the exact same settings as before with the same tool. And then we're gonna click calculate and we'll see what this looks like. So let's click preview, selected. And you'll see that is a really cool sign that is much different from the more standard signs you see.
And this would actually solve your problem with that thin piece in between the letter U. So this may carve much better with the same font, and you can even put a color in there if you wanted to see what it would look like if you were to paint it. And then those white areas you see there, those are just spots that are a little bit flat there that were not carved.
So you can fix that by either carving a little bit deeper or by placing your line spacing a little closer. Or you can even leave it just like this, that would not be a problem. You can even just paint that the same color as you paint the texture. So as you can see, that looks really cool and it's just something a little extra you can do to your signs to make them stand out from the rest.
That's all for this lesson. Hopefully this tip helped you out and if it did, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
So the top one is two dimensional. This next one is two and a half dimensional. So these are both great toolpaths that are used a lot, but one toolpath that is often overlooked is the texturing toolpath. And this toolpath can cut your letters as well, except you can add a little bit more design to your projects.
So if we preview that one, you could see how much that one stands out compared to the rest. And this is just a simple example of what you can do. You could do much more with this as well. So in this quick tip, I'm gonna show you some simple steps on how you can create toolpaths that look just like this. So first off, we're gonna start with a brand new project.
I will set this one up as 20 by 20 inches and three quarter inch thick. You can set it up for whatever size project you're working with. I would recommend zeroing from the material surface just so you get a nice consistent depth from your top of your material. And then you can zero your X and Y wherever you prefer.
I prefer the bottom left hand corner, and then we'll click okay. All right, I'm gonna show you how to do this with some simple shapes, but you can make complex shapes as well. So let's first add in some text. So for the text, I'm just gonna write texture, and you can size it, whatever size you'd like. I'm gonna keep it this size here, looks actually pretty good. So I will move this down here, click close, and then I'm going to add a shape as well. So let's add a star and I will draw a simple star up at the top here, and then click close. Okay, as you can see, I have a simple closed vector shape as well as some simple text.
Also, a good thing to mention here is your text, you want to have a lot of area in between the lines. So this is the impact font,this works really well. You'd wanna try to stay away from fonts, like fine cursive ones, maybe like this one here, you would not be able to fit, uh, too much texture in those, so those will not work as well. So I would recommend a more bold font like this, impact works pretty good.
So I'm gonna click close. So now what I'm going to do is hold shift and select all of the shapes that I want to add texture to. Which in this case will be all of them. And then I'm going to go to what's called the VectorTexture Tool. And this tool allows you to place texture inside of whatever shapes you select.
So you have a form here, you can play around with these settings to get them exactly where you want. You can change the angle, you can change the max spacing between the lines, as well as give it some variation. You can change the wave parameters, and you can also add some noise if you don't want nice smooth lines, and you would prefer more messy lines.
And then finally, what I like to do is check the box down here to place the vectors on a separate layer. That way it's a little bit easier to keep your project organized and you can select the texture easier if you had to later. So I just named the layer texture.
And then we can set up our settings up here. So for the max spacing, a lot of times I will use the diameter of my tool. That generally works out pretty good, but you can also play around with all of these settings to get different textures. You can even just use whatever's default here and just click preview and you'll see right away what it looks like.
Now, just keep in mind if you have a very slow computer, this may take a long time to render depending on how your settings are. So if your computer's really slow, I would recommend turning the noise down, that will help with the rendering speeds. But also try to save your project before rendering these, because in the past I've had my computer crash by trying to render this texture.
So just keep that in mind. Okay, so once we do this, we can zoom in and you'll see the texture will flow in between the shapes that are next to each other and even the shapes that are above and below. So you can imagine the texture being on this entire project, but then it's like a cookie cutter that cuts that texture out into the shapes that are on top of the project.
So that's basically how this is going to work. And then you'll see whenever you change something, let's say we change the angle and then click preview, you'll see then your texture would go at an angle as well. So like I said, you can play around all of these settings just to see the kind of differences you can make.
But once you're happy with the way it looks, just click okay. And then you'll see in your layers. You will have the original layer with all of the vectors on it, and then you'll have the new layer with just the texture on it, so that will allow you to keep those separated if you need to. With that done, we are going to go over to our toolpath tab, and then we're gonna use what's called the texturing toolpath.
And this toolpath will be available in VCarve Desktop, VCarve Pro and Aspire. So we can click on that and then you're gonna select your tool. So there's many different tools you can select for this toolpath. You can use ball noses, which is the most common one. You can use a v-bit, which is also another common one.
You can even use endmills, but those aren't as common. And you can also use like form tools and engraving tools. In this case, I'm gonna use a quarter inch ball nose. The start depth is going to be zero because I'm starting on the surface of my material. And then I'm going to check this box that says, use selected vectors as pattern, so I can either just select the texture as my pattern, or I can hold shift and also select the outlines as my pattern as well.
And by selecting the outlines, that will carve an outline around the shapes, which makes them a little bit easier to see what they actually are. So after you do that, the only options we have now are ramping at the start and end, and that would kind of fade your texture on the ends.
And then you have the option to change the max cut depth. So this is another measurement you could play around with. So I'm gonna go a 16th of an inch for this one, and then you also have the option to vary that. So if you leave this slider all the way to the left, that would put no variation. And then it would be a consistent depth that you set up here all the way through your project.
If you wanted to vary the depth, you can move this slider to the right, and the further right you go, the more variation it would give you. And then, of course, all the way left will give you no variation. So that's something you can play around with as well. And don't worry about getting these settings perfect right from the start, because you can go back to these and change them if you need to.
So then we're gonna come down here, we can give it a name if you like, and then click calculate. Okay, and then you will see the toolpath that it gives us. And then if we click preview,
you can see just like that. Now we got some text that has some nice texture into it. And this could make your signs stand out from a lot of other signs that are out there. Now, some things to consider here is like this letter U, that thin piece you have in there, depending on your material that may want to chip out.
So you'll have to be careful with areas like that. You may want to either change the font where this is a little bit wider there, you can do some node editing as well to make that a little bit wider. But just keep that in mind for stuff like that. But otherwise it looks really good, especially this star, you should have no issues with that.
So that's just one example of using the texture. I will show you one more quick example and what is more commonly used for is the background of your projects. So we can actually make the opposite effect on this. So I'm going to reset the preview. I am gonna go back to the 2D view.
I'm gonna hide this texture, and then I'm going to select both of these shapes and I'm gonna go back to our drawing tab and I'm going to make a boundary using the boundary create tool. And I'm gonna try this one inch, we'll see what it looks like. Okay,that doesn't look too bad. We are gonna have to weld this all together.
So we're gonna click close and then you're gonna click weld. And there you go, now you'll have a boundary around all of your shapes. The only thing is that little piece there we don't need. So I can just select that and delete it and then zoom out and you'll see we'll have just a boundary around the outside.
You don't have to do that boundary, you can also do a simple rectangle or whatever shape you'd like. And I also just realized I had the texture layer active, so that placed it on the texture layer, and brought back my original texture. So I'm gonna right click on this and I'm going to move it to layer one, and then I'm going to hide that texture again.
And now we'll see just our outline and our shapes in between. So now if you select both of those, the shapes in between and the outline. And then go back to the texture tool, and we can even use the same exact settings, except I'm gonna place it on a different layer this time, I'm gonna put it on texture number two, and I'm gonna click preview.
And now you can see by selecting the outline as well as the inner shapes, it places the texture on the opposite sides of the lines. So that will give us an even different effect to our final product. So let's click okay. And of course you can play around with those settings as well if you like. But then we're gonna go back to the texture toolpath.
And if we select all of our shapes, again, we're gonna use the exact same settings as before with the same tool. And then we're gonna click calculate and we'll see what this looks like. So let's click preview, selected. And you'll see that is a really cool sign that is much different from the more standard signs you see.
And this would actually solve your problem with that thin piece in between the letter U. So this may carve much better with the same font, and you can even put a color in there if you wanted to see what it would look like if you were to paint it. And then those white areas you see there, those are just spots that are a little bit flat there that were not carved.
So you can fix that by either carving a little bit deeper or by placing your line spacing a little closer. Or you can even leave it just like this, that would not be a problem. You can even just paint that the same color as you paint the texture. So as you can see, that looks really cool and it's just something a little extra you can do to your signs to make them stand out from the rest.
That's all for this lesson. Hopefully this tip helped you out and if it did, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
