Cannot extrude cut circular loft

[Anonymous]

Please forgive my ignorance.  I searched the forum and read a bit, but I can't seem to work this out.

I am in the process of making 3D printed business cards.  It's a dual extruder print.  One extruder will handle the fonts and the logo, the other extruder prints the base of the card.

Extruding the font and most of the logo through the base card worked well.  The problem that is presenting is that there is one part of the logo that is an infinity sign.  There are two lofts that give the logo the appearance of part of it going behind itself (if you can imagine a 3D infinity, it's just like every other 3D infinity).  

The effect set up in the logo without any problem.  I used loft, specified sides, followed an arc, and it worked fine.  Once the logo and lettering were done, I created a 1mm business card shape and extrude cut all of the letters through the "card."  The part that would absolutely *not* extrude was lofts.

I tried to cut the lofts into the business card, directly, but it wouldn't allow me to select surfaces to start the a cut loft in the desired shape.

The first picture is the "base" of the card.  There is a blue line added where the lofts should undercut the card.  The idea is to print an overlay of semi-transparent filament over the loft to make it seem like the logo is moving behind itself...

The next two pictures are of the loft in the infinity sign that I can't seem to extrude or cut from the base.

Any help would be appreciated!

[TheCADWhisperer]

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@Anonymous wrote:

  The part that would absolutely *not* extrude was lofts.

I tried to cut the lofts into the business card, directly, but it wouldn't allow me to select surfaces to start the a cut loft in the desired shape.

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Extrude Lofts?  Are you referring to the printing process?

Maybe Combine-Cut will give you what you need.

Can you File>Export and then Attach your *.f3d file here

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the response, CADWhisperer.  I've been working with this for a while.  Watched *many* videos from Autodesk, and I'm just very unclear in how to carve out the loft.  Everything has a learning curve...any info or instruction will be very much appreciated.

[TheCADWhisperer]

Maybe something like attached?  (I only did a couple of the letters.)

[Anonymous]

I think that I'm missing something very basic and important.  When I would try to bring the font into the card, it wouldn't remain as a separate instance or part.  It would always appear as a single entity, as if it were combining with the card, and I couldn't get the lofted part of the circle to do *anything,* as in making it inside of the card...

Can you point me toward a tutorial or instructions in how to accomplish this?

And, yes, this is what I was looking for.  🙂  So, thank you!

john

[TheCADWhisperer · Accepted solution]

I think my very first step - before anything else - would have been New Component.