CNC Tips: How To Make A VCarve Inlay

what's going on guys so have you ever wondered how people get the really cool inlays and the things like cutting boards recently I did some on the side of the chessboard which is what I'm gonna be showing today or like pretty much anything anything in wood that you can do anything from coffee tables to just board boxes to whatever is av carve inlaid now this is something stone with the C and C and I know you guys have seen them I'll kind of throw a couple of examples right here and they're really cool they really are you can be able to inlay shapes and designs that by hand honestly you probably could not do at all and you can get some extremely fine detail and they're all done that really similar the same way sometimes there's some extra tweaking but I wanted to go over today how exactly you do AV karynlee I'm going to be using a simple logo and working on all the sides for the other chess board boxes that I'm working on and show you guys step for step how to do this V carve inlay and get great results from it so let's jump on the computer and get right at it alright guys so the first thing you're gonna do once you open V carve up is go to the job set up and this is going to be how we determine the size of the job we're doing for this particular one it's going to be three and a half inches wide that is on Y our x-axis excuse me so three and a half inches wide the length of this side is 20 and a half inches and that is going to be our y-axis so this length here and then the thickness of our board is point four eight inches now for the zero position I'm going off the material surface for this particular job I see no reason to golf material bed sometimes that's helpful for this particular one I see no reason to for the XY datum position I'm going off of the left hand bottom corner this will be the lowest corner at which you set your home position your XY home position on your CNC so after this is lined up just hit okay and there's that as you can see I had already pulled up the logo I'm going to be in lane but I'm going to show you guys how I got to that in the first place so what I want to do is you can do this two or three different ways one way is to go to file import import bitmap 3d model of the car vectors any of that stuff or you can just drag and drop which is what I do usually for this particular one it's going to be this right here drag and drop and there is our logo so to get this logo lined up where we need it on this side I want to first start by rotating the model so make sure that the logo is selected go up here hit rotate and therefore angle we're just going to do 90 that will turn this model 90 degrees from its previous position and then from there with the logo still selected want to go to your alignment tool and click this top center button this will Center it both vertically and horizontally on your jobs on your job piece so whatever the size of your material is this will Center it dead center now from there I have a particular size that I need this logo so what I'm going to do is resize this leave it linked and then for this particular instance I want to adjust the width now remember this was turned to 90 so this is now your width from what would have been top and bottom and I want it to be an inch and a half and there we go that resizes it perfectly leaving this link to make sure it stays perfectly scaled down to where your width matches this size after that as you can see it has lined up perfectly in the center of this board so what we're going to do from there is this is pretty much set up for your tool path we're going to go ahead and open the tool path tab as you can see I've already done a couple but I'm going to get rid of them so I can show you exactly how to do this in the V car program so what you do is select your logo your picture whatever you would like to V carve and you select that to go over here and click V carve tool path now for a V carve inlay you're not going to use the cutting depths that would normally be used with a V car bit what this is going to do is if I were to unclick this this would not specify a depth and it would go as deep as it needs to go to get the width on these with the V carve in for this particular instance though we don't want that we want this to stay about the same size but we want to be able to control our depth so you're going to go up here and hit flat depth and then for the pocket on your inlay we're going to do a point two inch depth now the reason for that is it's one going to be a little bit deeper than the poke and this will give you a bit of a gap underneath and around the bottom of the pocket here for your glue to scent if you don't have that you would wind up pressing all the glue out or your plug wouldn't sit completely flush just due to the pressures from the glue inside the pocket so after that we're going to go over here and click on our 60 degree V bit that's what I'm going to be using for this particular one and as you can see I'm going with the standard set up and cut speeds 16,000 rpm 100 inch feed rate and a 30 inch plunge rate and this seems to work really well with the softer material that I'm using if you're doing a hardwood you can slow it down but I always recommend slowing it down and you see C&C not here that way you're not adjusting stuff here and you forget to put it back so hit OK and then we're going to name this the sixty degree V logo pocket and then we're also going to go over to the front of this what I like to do is do cut one now there's going to be three cuts total one is the pocket two will be a vCard setup of the plug and the third will be a flat end mil larger clearance area which I need to remove here for the plug you don't need this flat clearance here at all on the pocket so now we just hit calculate and kind of run this and as you can see it's a nice clean layout in the board so that's gonna work fine so with the V carve inlay of O go lined up and everything good to go after you check your profile your preview excuse me and if everything looks good there you move onto to setting up your tool path on the CNC to do that you need to save your tool path first are gonna go over to save tool paths click on the tool path get save and over here I'm just open up a new folder for this one as I have a few in there already so I have this label that's cut 160 degree V bit logo pocket get save and then from there we're going to go over to UCC and C and we're going to open that file so hit load file v3n leg cuts cut one this is one we just made and as you can see it pops up right here on the toolpaths area of the UC CNC so now what we're going to do is set the Z excusing the XY and z axis on the CNC and after that all we have to do is hit start cycle and it will go from there and cut the pocket but if you guys can see this right here this is the very lower left-hand corner and this is the XY data point that I had used in V carve and so with this board here you line up the very tip of your bit to the very tip of this corner the more precise your on this the better it is but that being said when you swap bits for anything else if you're doing stuff like this as long as you keep this perfectly positioned that won't change so relative to the next cut it won't matter but if you were to be doing multiple things on this board and might this logo here is loaded and our X and Y axis are set to send our z axis we're going to use the touch off pad and what this does is this allows the machine to note exactly the height of your bit now I already have the 60 degree V bit installed into the machine in you see C and C you simply hit the zero access button here and then this touch off button here this lowers the bit until it touches the z-axis pad and then the machining registers knowing exactly where the tip of the now all we have to do is to start cutting [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] alright guys so now that we have the inlay here cut into our long piece we need to save this file especially if you're going to be doing multiples or anything like that you need to save this file so you don't lose it so I'm going to save this as HP we're gonna do b3 just because I've done these before b3 smaller HP logo pocket save so this is going to save this file now the reason you need to do that is because you want to keep this logo setup exactly how it is on your larger setup however you cut the pocket the plug needs to be cut using the same logo at the exact same size or it won't line up so for that I'm going to be using some Hickory it is a smaller block of Hickory and honestly usually I get two to three inlays sometimes four if I can do two on each side but this particular one I'm only gonna do one on the top face just to show you guys the process so the first thing we need to do is determine the size of the piece of the wood we're using for the plug and adjust our job accordingly so we're gonna say it's we're going to go to job site or excuse me job setup job size in position job setup now this is going to go to 3 and 7/8 so 3.875 3.875 wide by 4 and 3/4 long so 4.75 hole and the thickness of this piece is going to be 0.77 so we adjust that thickness here within the setup point seven seven we're going to use the same XY datum and material surface zero points and just hit okay now as you'll see it dropped this down to the bottom so the first thing I want to do is take on logo and I want to realign it with in the center of the job so that realigns that here within center and then next what we need to do this is going to be a little different from the pocket in the way that we need to cut this where it is not recessed into the wood or cut into the wood but everything around of the logo is actually cut out and the edges of the logo itself protrude to go into the pocket so what we're going to do is we're going to take and draw a rectangle around this and it doesn't have to be massive depending on your work size if you've got plenty of workspace it's fine but as you can see this is a nice open rectangle around our logo so what this is going to do is allow us material here to remove so that this band and the actual letters of the logo stand up above the bottom face of the board or of the book so honestly and also what you need to do next is take your logo sorry about that my phone's going off and mirror it what this is going to do is you're going to flip it horizontally to do this you simply select the logo hit mirror make sure it does not create a mirrored copy and hit flip horizontal this flips the logo horizontally on the vertical axis to where when this is cut out this will simply flip over into place if you do not do not do this you'll wind up with a plug that is the exact same cutout as your pocket and then this won't line up but the problem is is that you're cutting the same shape instead of a mirrored image of it so it's really simple swap this using the mirror tool and add the rectangle and it's good to get ready to cut for the toolpath we're going to select all of this the square and the logo we're going to go to V carve make sure you're still using your same V carve bit and then what we want to do here is a little different on the depth instead of starting at zero we want it to start at one tenth of an inch now what this is going to do is actually start cutting this shape one-tenth of an inch below the surface of the wood this will allow for that extra one tenth of an inch at the bottom of the NLA to be used for gluing this is really important if you don't do this odds are it's not gonna fit super tight and wind up with a super clean cut out for the logo once everything is cleaned up and sanded so make sure you're using the same bit as you are using for the pocket which in this case is a 60-degree B bit and then for this I also want to use a flat area clearance tool now what this is going to do is generate a second tool path with a different cutting tool to remove all the flat areas here that you can remove with a V carve bit it's just going to take forever so when I do this I like to use an eighth of an inch in mill and that is nice and small and gets all into the tight places into the tight areas between the logo without worrying about any issues and makes clearing this out much much faster so with this set I want to add this as our sixty degree V logo inlay plug calculate now as you can see this gave me two different tool paths here this tool paths here are to take this off this is our flat area clearance tool this is our one-eighth inch end mill bit as you can see all of this here if I were to play this toolpath it's going to excuse me this is our V bit not the fight area sorry this is going to cut out everything that is cut out by the V bit as you can see and then this one here we're going to rename we're going to name this one oh excuse me that's why I click the wrong one this one right here is going to be our point one two five one eight in Mill pull logo inlay hug flat so this tells me that this is the with a one point two five inch end mill and this will remove all of the flat areas as you can see so this right here completely removes and flattens us out leaving this protruding area that will go into the pocket on our board that we just previously could so now with this just like with the other we need to save the tool paths so if you have a machine that can automatically swap that's different on my machine I have to manually swap bits I also don't see any difference in how it cuts between cutting your vCard first or your flat area first may be wrong on that and some it may depend on the wood but with things like this Hickory I haven't found a reason why one should become before the other to be honest so what I'm going to do is I'm going to save the V carve cut as cut too sixty-degree the logo inlay pug we're gonna go to the same folder as the cut one save and then we're going to save the flat area clearance tool which would be cut three into the same folder now these and it's nice having everything in the same folder makes it much easier to find so now we go back to UC c and c and then we want to load up the cut to now for this you will see that everything is set up and ready to cut and all you have to do now is the same process process as before of lining up your XY axis setting the zero and then setting the zero to this new piece just because the thickness of this piece changed from the previous pieces so let's get that done now and I will cut this and we'll see how this turns out [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] so guys these inlays are awesome that I love how these come out these logos are super simple but you can do anything with a V carve inlay you can do as detailed as your mind can get as long as it's not too small if you have a 10 or 12 or 15 or 20 inch canvas to work on the possibilities are truly endless you can do almost anything I believe you can even do V carve in lays with V carve portrait which is a another program that is offered by V carved I don't have right now I do want to get that in the future and try it out it looks awesome but being able to add a personal touch to things like cutting boards coffee tabletops cigar boxes you know being able to add a monogram letter or message to the back of a cutting board or if it's a sportsman put a fish or a detailed deer or whatever not only does it add a personal touch to the project but it can make you more money you really can you can charge that extra for the work and it's something someone is going to love and bring more business to you for and I love them I can't talk enough about them I love doing V carve inlays and I'm gonna try to get some more complicated ones done before too long so guys I hope you found this helpful and I really do enjoy doing these and I want to thank everybody for watching the video make sure you hit the subscribe button and the like button and hit the notification bill that really helps me out it helps me grow it's hard doing these videos sometimes and getting time to do so many projects and actually film it and edit and everything else but I do love doing them so let me know in the comments if this was helpful what you would like to V car or if you have any questions I'll do my best to answer them so with that in mind also go check me out on instagram @ JP woodworking and check out JP mo barking calm I have some plans a few things for selling some really cool articles not only of myself but different makers and everything so go check that out and guys again I really appreciate it and I'll see you on the map [Music]

Channel: JPayne Woodworking

Views: 22,012

Keywords: cnc, cnc woodworking, woodworking, #woodworking, #woodwork, #cnc, how to, #howto, #tutorial, #inlay, inlay, wood inlay, cnc tutorial

Id: rpOFg2bzLzM

Length: 27min 39sec (1659 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 12 2019