F-engrave - very impressed

Projects
1

I started playing around with f-engrave a short time ago but had trouble getting an accurate Z height - those pointy bits don’t play well with using a sheet of paper to set the Z!. As I was rebuilding my controller, I decided to make a proper Z probe for it. Now setting Z height is a breeze.

I’m impressed with f-engrave, excellent results, easy to use and very affordable (free!)

Material is 18mm MDF, bit is a cheap, hardware store 90 mitre bit vee bit, 1/4". Cleanup was done with a 2mm, 2 flute endmill.
This is as it came off the X-Carve, no cleanup done at this stage. The line parallel to the character outline, is just a few fibers and scraped off with a fingernail. Turning on the setting to do a perimeter cut in the cleanup code may fix this.

Finish of the cut is good but I think I could turn up the spindle speed a little. The bottom of the cut is perfect, due I think to the accurate Z height setting.
A quick cleanup with aforementioned fingernail and this was the result. A bit of sanding might be necessary as well.

Tomorrow, I’ll try cutting some real wood (baltic pine) and see if the speeds and feed hold up OK.

2 Likes
2

What settings did you use for the cleanup?

3

Cleanup bit was 2mm, step over of 50% with cleanup cut directions of X and Y.
Vbit cleanup step was 1mm and cut direction was P (perimeter).

I think I’ll add the P direction to cleanup for the next run.

Here’s my current F-Engrave config file.

config.ngc (2.7 KB)

4

I’m also a big fan of F-Engrave. I use it for all my inlay work, and any time I am making a sign. The ability to import bmp and dxf files is a big plus also. You can find a (public-use) image on the web, convert it to a bmp, and carve it into a chunk of wood in no time.