I am new to the machine, not new to cad or 3d printing. So my question is twofold. what bit would I use to carve out wood for a sign? the second question I have Inventor and fusion 360 how would I put decorative corners on signs I would create?
For bits it depends on what you are trying to do. V-caving signs would require v-bits in a variety of angles. For 3D relief carves you need ball nose end mills. The more intricate the details, the smaller the endmill will need to be. For your second question, I have no idea about Inventor. As for Fusion, you either have to model it into your sign from scratch, or import a mesh file and covert it to a B-rep. Then Fusion will inevitably tell you there are too many faces in the mesh model and request you reduce it. You will reduce it to what you think is a reasonable amount. It will tell you you still have too many faces. You will repeat this process until that beautiful 3D model has no resolution and looks like crap and maybe crash the software a couple of times. After days, or weeks, or months of searching for simple solutions you will eventually seek out other solutions. The one solution I am familiar with and find insanely easy to use is Vcarve desktop or Pro. I can take a 3D model from thingiverse, import it into a Vcarve project, and have all my toolpaths created in a matter of minutes. Granted, I watched a couple Vectric tutorials on the subject first and have done it many times now. If you do not want to pay for the software and are handy with Fusion, you can create a sign with fusion with the text and pockets and whatever else is easy for Fusion to model. Then save it as an .stl. and import it into mesh mixer and learn how to combine the 3D models with your sign then resave it as a new .stl file. Then find a cam software that can easily generate tool paths from .stl files. Or, buy Vcarve and enjoy actually cutting out signs and other projects. Can you tell I have been where you are now.
