Engraving with Ball Mill

[chris_IgniteDigi]

Hi,

I would love to be able to engrave with a ball mill. The current engrave function requires a chamfer mill, and gives nice corners, but the trough of the engraving requires a perfect point on the chamfer mill, which is cutting with little to no surface speed.

It would be great if the was the option to select text the same way as you currently do when using the engrave tool path, however if you select to use a small ball mill, if the tool path generated behaved similar to a slot, ie place the ball mill in the middle of the text and trace a single path down the centre of the text.

This would be such a handy feature to have, as the current work around of creating single line fonts to then use the trace tool path is much more time consuming.

Thanks for considering this.

Cheers

Chris

[daniel_lyall]

Just lie to it and stick one in there, fusion wont know if no one says anything, jokes a side yer it would be good to be able to do it native and not lie to it 

[Anonymous]

Just to make it even easier to implement here is the new, no longer linear, function to calculate the depth of cut from the cutter radius and the width of the slot:

depth = cutter_radius - sqrt( cutter_radius^2 - (width / 2)^2 )

or written out as:

depth = cutter_radius - sqrt( (cutter_radius * cutter_radius) - ( (width / 2) * (width / 2) ) )

domain (obviously): 0 < width < 2 * cutter_radius

This should pretty much be a quick, drop-in replacement.

Hope it gets implemented soon.

[rohit.bapat]

Hello @chris_IgniteDigi

I am glad to have an update regarding Single Line Fonts. Latest Fusion 360 has added several single line fonts (SHX) in the text command. These are stroke fonts which will help in creating a single stroke toolpath for engraving.

Could you please give it a try and let us know if it is working as you expected?

Thank you,

Best Regards

Rohit Bapat

[chris_IgniteDigi]

Hi Rohit,

I was just trying to make it work, and the single fonts show up, however the tool path trying to trace the single line font does not seem to work as expected.

[chris_IgniteDigi]

It appears this problem was with the iso.shx font, when I tried with the simplex.shx font it worked .... thanks 

[chris_IgniteDigi]

[rohit.bapat]

Hello @chris_IgniteDigi

Thank you for your reply. We will try to raise the issue of iso.shx with the team.

Also, thank you for posting the picture. I am assuming engraving was done with single fonts in Fusion  

Thank you,

Best Regards

Rohit Bapat

[CBB1962]

Fusion is greatly lacking in handling text and engraving it:

• Text wrap 
  • Define a text box and allow text to fill the box.
• Align multiple lines of text to a line (horizontal alignment)
• The ability to distribute lines between two points (Verticle Distribution)
• Select multiple lines and change attributes for the selection
  • need to be able to change font, size, and alignment for a set of lines.
• Align text along a curved path.
• Easily emboss text
• Give a warning that not all sections of some letters did not engrave.
  • if you choose a bit with too large a tip it may not engrave the cross-bar of an "A" or the top and bottom of an "O"  - It would be nice to know.
  • give a warning when the interior is not completely cleared.Add the ability to treat the interior of a letter as a pocket and clear the un-machined portions.
• Engraving tool paths SUCK!!
  • I repeat Engraving tool paths SUCK !!!
  • If you have multiple lines of engraving Fusion will first engrave the O's and 0's then it will jump all around. It is incredibly inefficient. 
    • The path of a drunken pig makes more sense.
    • The developer of Engraving must have said: "Oh well, at least it works..."