[Mr. LocoMartin]

:drowning:
In spite of my occasional continued efforts to get letters and numbers to stand positive and profile around them, I have been unsuccessful.
I believe this project to be very simple and straight forward, I just can't get the V22 to spit it out.
Basically, I am trying to make a 2.5 inch diameter number plate for the front of my steam locomotive.
The face of the number plate is slightly dished out and it has a number "5" in the middle about 1 inch tall.
Following the outside diameter across the top would be the letters "Pinkston".
Following the outside diameter across the bottom would be the letters "Engine Works". These letters would be about a 1/4" tall and everything would stand off the surface about 1/8".
Basically it's suppose to look like a number plate on the front of an old steam locomotive.
Easy, right ??? Try again.
Any ideas ?

[orizaba]

I might be the least qualified person to help here but I just did the same thing for a local race track. I used slice radial then cleaned it up with a profile around each letter. It left a nice starburst pattern in the background.
Then used a 60 degree sharp bit to engrave the smaller letters

[Mr. LocoMartin]

It's not the toolpath I'm having trouble with. It's the creation of the geometry...

[orizaba]

Are you vectorizing the text?
Open the "text" dialog and type in the text you want, select the vectorize function then click in the work space where you want it. This is from memory, so I might have left something out.
Matt

[moldmker]

Is this what you're looking for?
The 1/8" relief might be a little much for a 1/4" high letter, depending on what you're cutting.

moldmker

[Mr. LocoMartin]

MoldMaker,
Yes, that is almost perfect. As you pointed out the depth is a little too deep but other than that really good.

Now, I guess my question is, what am I not doing right ?
I have the tutorial CD's but they don't cover this kind of operation.
And I have even tried to see if there were pieces in the CD's that maybe covered a small aspect of how to put this together.

I have tried vectorized letters, but I can not get them to cap off on top and my ball endmill drops inside the letters. (Looks interesting, but not what I wanted)
I have been able to get letter to form onto an arc, but then getting them to go from 2-D to 3-D is not working.

Thanks,
Martin

[orizaba]

Are you selecting "with caps" when you extrude the surface?
1) select vectorize when applying the text
2) make each letter a planer surface,
3) then extrude with caps.
hope this helps

[Mr. LocoMartin]

Vectorizing- I do.
Make each letter a planer surface ???
I'm not sure I know how to do that...
Capping- I do.

Thanks,
Martin

[orizaba]

in the tool bar find the planer surface and open it. Hold down the shift key and select the geometry. left click in the work place then right click ok, the line will become a surface that can be extruded.

[Mr. LocoMartin]

Holy cats, it worked. Thanks so much Orizaba.
Others have tried to explain it and I got close, but tonight it worked.
I'm so excited I need to go wake up the wife...;-)
I'm going to post a picture of the badge on my blog. And you can check it out at
www.212steam.blogspot.com

[moldmker]

As you'll find out...there's lots of ways to skin a cat.

I used unvectorized text.
Then used Fit Text to a Curve (which automatically vectorizes text)
Then all modeling was done using Extrude Curve w/Caps.

moldmker

[orizaba]

Moldmaker
I will try it tonight. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know.
Thanks.

[orizaba]

Mr. LocoMartin
I'm glad it worked, I just learned how to do it too. I'm new to this as well. In college we would see it, do it, teach it. Works in real life too.
BTW
Nice webb site.
Matt