Since I purchased my small CNC machine, I've experimented with many various ways to do projects. I sometimes vector images in applications like Illustrator. Sometimes I convert an image to black and white and I've had some success carving "pictures" this way if I do a fair amount of work in photoshop to make it carve well. I started thinking this morning that maybe there is a way to combine the two.
I went back to my vectored Star Wars piece and imported the original image it was based on. In the carving application I overlayed the two and selected "additive". This told the application I wanted both sets of data to be used in preparing the carve. So it had data on some solid shapes at various heights, and then a bunch of data on the image...I think the combined result is interesting.
It looks pretty good and should be relatively easy to paint. Before I do it in Azek pvc (Thanks to my local distributer Todd at Parksite), I decided to do a test carve in some 15# HDU to see what isn't working so I can correct it before the final carve. It's carved at roughly 14" x 20"...
Not bad at all....just a few small changes and it'll be ready to carve when the Azek material arrives tomorrow!
I love it doug! I'm a huge Star Wars fan and Hilderbrant Brothers fan. When you say you used the addative command...was that in the carvewrite software or illustrator?
ReplyDeleteThat's a test piece in some 15lb HDU eh?...hmmmm, don't you just hate having test pieces laying around? ;) LOL0 Is it Precision Board 15lb?
Thanks for journalling this one...I want to try something like this myself...but next Janine want's me to make a giant fried egg for some reason. LOL
Ryan
Ryan,
ReplyDeleteIt was in the CarveWright Designer software, but I'm almost certain it should be possible in Enroute. If not, I bet we could get Dan to put a bug in someone's ear!