Bend, if you will, a picture....

I'm going to share a secret with you. I like to experiment.  There is a joy in improving something once I figure out how to do it, but the first time is always the best.  It's where "what if" becomes "is".  I don't even mind the failures. They are often spectacular in their own right and teach me more, sometimes, than the success.

Today I thought "Carving pictures in Corian is fun, but what if I heated up the Corian after I carve it...will it bend like the pvc material I've been carving?". I'd seen a sample of someone elses, but didn't know their process. I did some research online and discovered that it will bend with heat. Even better, it turns out Corian holds up quite well outdoors. That suggests a number of ideas to me...

I began by cutting out a series of half-circle shapes out of MDF and gluing them together. This would be the form that I would use to bend the Corian over:

Next, I found a picture. This particular image is the daughter of a good friend.

I convert the image to Grayscale, and then import it into designer.  The settings are critical.  The entire image is carved into the machine less than 1/8" deep.  The software basically takes the 256 levels of gray and treats them as depth indicators. So it carves the deepest for white or lighter colors and carves less for dark. For black, it essentially carves nothing.

Now I let the CarveWright do the work.  Because the depth is so small, the machine completes this in very little time.  With a little backlighting, the material looks like the image!

Now it was time to have fun...I used a heat source (I won't divulge what, as my wife would be unhappy if it were to get back to her) to heat up the Corian, and then I bent it over the form.  It worked great!  I then decided to make a wooden base to attach to it. This base will provide stability and can be used to either back light the image with a candle, or to mount a light source. 

Right now I have to go, because there are other materials in the shop I haven't tried to heat up and bend yet and the day is young!