ENGRAVING TEXT

[nikoDJ4GQ]

Hello There,

Once again need help. So, i have a long text that i vectorized into AI and then sent to fusion 360.

First of all for inserting that .DXF into fusion it takes approximatly 15minutes. Then to convert it from inched to mm it takes 10 minutes. Seems huge to me for a software as glorious as fusion. Well then ok it's open.

So the point is to engrave all those letters in a stock kinda wood (swiss cdf exactly) which is a white laminate on a piece of black polyurethane. What i wanna do is mill the white laminate so i obtain the black to appear as letters (sorry, i'm still french, do my best to make myself understand)

Since now it's open, it is totally impossible to insert that dxf on the stock of 1800MM by 1000MM, fusion would just crash...

So i decided that maybe i could work on the dxf straightly and then tell fusion that i wanna mill those contours with a 1MM tool at let's say 2MM mm depth... But then ! I have to select ALL the letters ONE BY ONE... impossible to me, i mean i have 17 of those to make.. Imagine my life ; )

Do you have any idea how to do that easily ?

Thanks a lot for your help guys !

[daniel_lyall]

Can you do the text in fusion instead of a different program.

[nikoDJ4GQ]

Well since a graphist did it, i guees this is not an option.. 

I saw a video of Liberty machine about engraving.. With some svg doc, i tried but still too heavy work for fusion. What i do not understand is that it is finally just text. I mean, we can modelise complex ingeniory machines on fusion, but it does not handle text ?

[GeorgeRoberts]

Hello,

Thanks for posting. Does Fusion crash when you are selecting the sketch as the geometry, rather than selecting each individual element (select the sketch from the left hand tree)? If so, could you share the DXF so I can take a look?

This looks like the text is converted into arc/line segments, and the issue could lie with how it was converted.

[nikoDJ4GQ]

Actually, here, fusion crashes a lot of times. It does not respond, looks like it calculates and then i offently have to force it to leave, and restart it..

I tried also in svg just now, but still working since 30 minutes and could'n't even place the svg files. When i click ok, it does not crash, but it does not respond anymore.

I tried also to type the text but since i have many lines and fusion does not allow to go back to the next line, i'd have to type each line manually, then calibrate it so it is well aligned on x and y axis .. Well too hard ...

I share you the dxf file below . Thanks a lot

[Anonymous]

usually the problem with any vector based file that is converted to dxf is that it converts all the curves/splines into a lot of lineair short segments.

For a file like you have this results in an enourmous amount of very short straight line segments.

This is hell for any cad package I know.

best is to make sure the vector file given is clean and made up of curves..  then get it in a format fusion can read.

Your best option is to try to get the original vector file as svg from the package it was made in.

a lot (and I really mean a lot) of times you save an original curved based vector file into an dxf or anything else..  it fits all the curves with short lineair line segments.

That's why it takes an awfull lot of time to import.

This is not really fusions problem, but the lack of supporting eps for example directly.

I would love to see more (good) support for 2D formats.

[GeorgeRoberts]

Hello,

thanks for uploading the DXF. 100% agree with everything in the above post!

A 36Mb file is huge for a DXF with just text... Do you know what package this was created in? Are you able to get a copy of the file in the format which it was created?

You could probably smooth the DXF out with a package like AutoCAD, but the export issue should really be resolved.

[nikoDJ4GQ]

Hello

I do agree, it's quite a big file.

But what option do i have ? The original file is a PDF made in adobe illustrator, that's how the graphist delivered it to me.

Then again, i tried both. DXF and SVG and it's exactly the same problem.

I did read some forums saying that we have to "simplify" in adobe illustrator, and followed the instruction; but very fastly if you simplify, your curves become very bad and more and more like lines... 

It does look like the problem is ofently asked for answers, since i found many posts on different forums about this.

Why can't we just open a JPEG or whatever, in very good resolution of course and then having a software that detects it's text and so we need to engrave it, do not know what elese we could do with it anyway. I just can't believe how difficult it is just for some text.

Another option that could be great inside fusion and this one makes sense.. Type text, ok.. But we can only type one line at a time ! no possibility to type a sentence and then if you're out of stock go back to the line. Nope.. Only line per line.

I give you the pdf as it is given to me and thank you for helping me.

[Anonymous]

As you can see the pdf is only 27k, while the dxf is 32M

That supports my answer that it somewhere converted the curves into small line segments.

I'll take a look at the pdf to see if I can help you out..  I have some tricks up my sleeve when it comes to things like this.

[nikoDJ4GQ]

well thank you for helping Peter,

I'm still trying some stuffs myself but, i don't see really how i can go over that ...

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Here you go.

I converted the pdf to an svg directly with an online tool.

Please do check if all the text is still in the same spot.

If the conversion is wonkey, you might have to try another pdf to svg converter.

As you can see in Fusion..  it is now just simple text.

For cam you don't need to pull it into geometry.

Just select the engrave option with an engraving tool and select the text itself.

Tested it and it works great.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

[nikoDJ4GQ]

This just looks perfect ! thank you so much peter.

May i ask you what converter you used ?

Thanks again, this is wunderbar !

[Anonymous]

I googled pdf to svg and tried the first link that came up https://cloudconvert.com/pdf-to-svg

😉

Glad it worked!

[nikoDJ4GQ]

Ok perfect, thanks.

So oooone last question.

I did generate a engrave toolpath.. but then if you open the file and simulate that engrave toolpath . Look at all the non usefull moves, it starts up then goes down, goes back up and down and up... Is there an yway to make it engrave letters after letters to do not waste such time and power for.. nothing ?

Thanks again

[daniel_lyall]

It is optimised to go in the X direction, if it's along y it's all over the show 

[Anonymous]

I have no idea..  but it looks like the engraving in fusion could need some work sorting.

Even if you select only one line of text..  it still jumps all over the place. Does not seem to be a priority in x or y..  because if I swap X and Y it does basically the same.

There is no sorting option in the toolpath options like you have with for example drilling..

Maybe report this as a problem..  I don't see an easy fix for this.

you can try to limit the jumping around by creating an engraving toolpath per line or something.

[daniel_lyall]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have no idea..  but it looks like the engraving in fusion could need some work sorting.

Even if you select only one line of text..  it still jumps all over the place. Does not seem to be a priority in x or y..  because if I swap X and Y it does basically the same.  the setup has to be done correctly for it to worki

There is no sorting option in the toolpath options like you have with for example drilling..

Maybe report this as a problem..  I don't see an easy fix for this. It's not a bug other programs I have do the samething with engrave/Vcarve

you can try to limit the jumping around by creating an engraving toolpath per line or something. that's how you do it 

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Engrave looks simple it's not it's a variable toolpath one letter can have 5 plus moves in it 

[Anonymous]

Still it makes no sense that if you pick only one sentence it jumps from left to right.

An option would be if you could tell to optimize in one direction.

but then you still have the problem if it are separate sentences.

I never really used engraving in HSM just yet..  I always use V-Carve for it, and it does not do this weird jumping around. 

maybe if you do emboss the text into your object and then use those cavities for engraving it does something more predictable.

have not tried that yet.

[nikoDJ4GQ]

Well Yes, i did try to set it on X axis and finally it's the same thing but on the different axis...

On a sentence for example like "BE WHAT YOU WANNA DRINK"

It could start at the B then go to the K then come back the B then go back and finish the K then come back to the E .. Well, it's totally not organized.

Will be ok, since it makes it, so i'll be able to the job and thank you for that. But still, it's nonsense. it will take 4H and it could take 1 hour.

Quite weird ... If a FUsion 360 developper reads that, would be nice to tell us, the logic about that. See what the point is and if it could be better in the future.

[HughesTooling]

Just tried your example and it seems pretty good to me. One thing to note, the origin is at the bottom left corner and the text is along the X axis.

Don't forget engrave is not just for lettering it can be used on logos and reliefs where sort orders are not obvious. 

Mark