eCut for CorelDRAW - Help. Edge roll.

Main information

This feature will help you to save time when producing channel letters. This method create notches on edge in bending points. Then you have to heat this nothces and bend edge along face of letter. It looks very nice when edge is made from one peace (except if you have very long edge and it does not fit in material).
And here is some notes

Objects must have cusp nodes, or it makes no sense to use this function.
Object must no be very complex, or it is physically difficult to create such channel letter.
Because of edge bending - you have to prepare face manually - I'll show you how to do it.

Preparing face of channel letter

Object must have not many sharp nodes, and its shape must be not very complex.

IMPORTANT!!!

If you have cutted or thin corners - you have to fix it first.

It is not difficult to fix most of bad coorners:

Select your shape (red one) and create countour OUTSIDE with offset = material bending radius (here 3mm)
Break apart and select contour (blue one) and create contour INSIDE with offset = 2 * material bending radius (here 6mm)
Break apart and select contour (green one) and create contour OUTSIDE with offset = material bending radius (here 3mm)
In next steps we'll fillet this sharp corners.

Make duplicate of face and fillet it using eCut process corners function from effects. Original you'll need to create edges.
Remember - fillet radius maust be bigger then material width that you use for edges.

After filleting face you need to create groove to help you to make channel letter.
MIRROR SHAPE because we need to do it on back side.
Create contour inside with offset = material width. And make it little bigger 0.1mm - it helps for better edge fitting.
This contour you also can use as back of channel letter

Creating edge

After face is ready - time to create edge. Most fast stage.
Select original face (not filleted) and start eCut edge roll feature
Function has few parameters.

Depth - depth of edge
Material width - thicknes of material that you use for edges
Corner bending radius - bending radius that you want (Rb)
Automaticaly create face - allow plugin to create face. It uses standard CorelDRAW procedures that may have bugs - check result carefully!
Use tools diameter - you can create paths for direct cutting on CNC.
Use edge max length - if material for edges is not big enough - you can let eCut to cut edge to pieces
Material bend compensation - for PVC use 0.5
Min angle to process - angle, where to create notch

You also can pick node on preview and set it as first node, or use Dbl click to create node on curve

Makign channel letter

Everything ready to cut face, edge and back side.

And produce letter.

Experimental features

You can ask eCut to fix shapes by checking "Fix shapes (experimental)". In this case plugin will draw pink circles in each node that will be bended. But I recomend you to fix shapes in CorelDRAW using contours.

If you have any question - feel free to contact developer.

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