V carving with a Dremel 125 bit

a Dremel 125 bit

I recently purchased and assembled a Shapeoko 2 kit from Inventables and my wife asked me to help her etch text into a plaque for her boss as a going away present.  Well, the easiest way to do text is V-carving, and V-carving requires V-bits.

Here's the problem: traditional V-bits all have 1/4" shafts which don't fit into the rotary tool (a Chinese made Dremel knock-off) that comes standard in the Shapeoko 2 kit.

I was in my local big box hardware store and happened to see a cone-shaped carving bit, the Dremel 125.  You get two in a package for $9.50, that's about a third of the cost of a traditional V-bit, so maybe this lets us do V-carving on the cheap!

The first thing to do is take some measurements. I found the largest diameter of the bit is 0.24" and the height of the cone is 0.38" which means it's a cone with an opening angle of 35.05 degrees.

I put that angle into F-Carve, and viola! V-carving on the cheap. You can see results after the jump: