Having trouble chamfering stencil letters

benj_fitzpatrick

My project is to make some 3d printed stencils so I can use a dobber/marker (perhaps spray paint in a pinch) to add the text on top of painted metal. I would like to add a chamfer to the stencil text to make it easier for the large marker tips to make it into all of the corners. Most of the characters work reasonably well, but there is part of zero that breaks the chamfer and the same thing happens for the lower case "l". Thoughts on how I can get this to work properly?

_anton

Empirical observation: extrude+draft can work better than a chamfer. Example: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/9af54e85e3a485c9a3b6ee4b/w/0b88cc1f92683f04b8ac98a2/e/fd64bfdd52f518b89073c30a

If you change the configuration variable from 2mm to 3mm, the chamfer fails but the extrude+draft succeeds, though not without artifacts.

I think, with some thought, the approach could be mapped onto your use case.

EvanReese

_anton said:

Empirical observation: extrude+draft can work better than a chamfer. Example: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/9af54e85e3a485c9a3b6ee4b/w/0b88cc1f92683f04b8ac98a2/e/fd64bfdd52f518b89073c30a

If you change the configuration variable from 2mm to 3mm, the chamfer fails but the extrude+draft succeeds, though not without artifacts.

I think, with some thought, the approach could be mapped onto your use case.

Extrude+draft is what I came here to suggest.

NeilCooke

Do each character separately until you find the culprit. It is likely the break in the zeros (or the b) where the chamfer self-intersects.

benj_fitzpatrick

@NeilCooke thank you very much for the suggestion. The top of a zero works well when I chamfer it all by itself (so does the "b"). However, the 2, the bottom of the zero, and the "l" all run into issues, even when each section is chamfered separately. For the bottom half of the zero, it also breaks immediately if I select the upper straight segment all by itself.

_anton

Empirical observation: extrude+draft can work better than a chamfer. Example: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/9af54e85e3a485c9a3b6ee4b/w/0b88cc1f92683f04b8ac98a2/e/fd64bfdd52f518b89073c30a

If you change the configuration variable from 2mm to 3mm, the chamfer fails but the extrude+draft succeeds, though not without artifacts.

I think, with some thought, the approach could be mapped onto your use case.

EvanReese

_anton said:

Empirical observation: extrude+draft can work better than a chamfer. Example: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/9af54e85e3a485c9a3b6ee4b/w/0b88cc1f92683f04b8ac98a2/e/fd64bfdd52f518b89073c30a

If you change the configuration variable from 2mm to 3mm, the chamfer fails but the extrude+draft succeeds, though not without artifacts.

I think, with some thought, the approach could be mapped onto your use case.

Extrude+draft is what I came here to suggest.

benj_fitzpatrick

@NeilCooke thank you very much for the suggestion. The top of a zero works well when I chamfer it all by itself (so does the "b"). However, the 2, the bottom of the zero, and the "l" all run into issues, even when each section is chamfered separately. For the bottom half of the zero, it also breaks immediately if I select the upper straight segment all by itself.

benj_fitzpatrick

@_anton and @Evan_Reese thank you very much for the suggestion, I will give extrude + draft a try.

benj_fitzpatrick

Thank you both again! I likely have lots of tweaking and learning left to do this properly, but I have something that looks pretty good to me at this point. I put the text on the bottom surface (extruding up from there to create the body of the stencil) and used the "flip horizontal" icon in the text entry box to flip it around. Then I used the extrude + draft and remove to create the character openings with a 20 degree angle.