Hi,
I tried a 3d cut today, one of a crocodile swimming.
I found it to be an interesting exercise working out quicker cut types on PixwlCNC.
Firstly I did a rough parallel cut with 1/4 inch flat to remove a lot of wood and following the canvas contour. Then I did another with a 2.5 mm ball nose lengthwise followed by another parallel cut, cross wise. This cleaned up a lot of the hanging hairs and smoothed out the finish.
I cut it out then finished with a path carving using a 90degree v-bit to chamfer the outside edge.
The finish quality was good except I did have to do some manual sanding as this exercise demonstrated:
1. My Z-Axis has a little bit of slop in the up down movement. It left random artefacts of cross lines which I had to sand off. Not large, just visible and annoyingly visible. They were possibly 100ths of a millimetre in height, just visible and easily sanded.
At least I should be patting myself as it is a home made CNC.
2. I assume I could hide the issue by doing a cross Parallel cut first then a longitudinal one last following the wood grain. There would be less Z axis movement and cuts.
3. Setting the Z retract height needs more of my attention as I had the Z retracing way above the canvas contour wasting cut time. I've to work on the what the optimum heights should be to keep Z-axis retraction minimised.
Here is a photo:
Russ
Hi, I’ve progressed, carving it out using v-carving to get the lines worked well. I did not try lowering the face nor hands as I did on my first example, just two lower layers this time.
The small diamonds are a lot shallower.
Another advantage of this is it cut a lot quicker.
There’s some tearing, expected but the focus here is to do different height layers and inversions with different blending modes.
I did not clean the top layer this time and I think the contrast between old and clean wood looks good. It helps see the high detail.
I’ve been trying to do a carving of a playing card. It’s been a growth journey.
My first attempt using just black and white to set carved depth worked but didn’t produce an easy viewable outcome. This set me into seeing if I can do a better 3D design.
I decided to try creating a multi tiered design with various heights to simulate a 3D so that the king looks as though standing in front of the rear surface/wall.
I targeted making 3 levels. 1: the large diamond inverted so that it stands high rather than sunken, 2: the surround about the large diamond and the king’s hand lower, 3: the kings face lower than the hair.
In doing so the approach was I converted the image into a paths layer. From the paths layer I used the tools to select particular paths eg a diamond, With that I created a new paths layer from the paths and filled the closed paths with a flat fillet with Shapes from Paths which made a new raster layer.
I set the z layer height with additive blending. With the diamond surrounds I also did a path selection and fillet. I used it then with a subtractive blend to take away/lower the surface. Similarly to the king’s face but with it not as low.
Getting the z heights right was fiddly. I need better discipline with that.
Unfortunately I did miss raising the cuffs on the sleeve. That was black and sunken. I should have set it higher above the hands. Maybe I will fix that if I cut this again.
I’m sure there are many techniques yet for me to use to simplify. One of course is to select multiple similar areas to create as one in a new raster layer.
I’m happy with the outcome as it’s heaps better layered except now that I’ve cut it I see that viewing a wood carving with so much detail is hard. There might needs to be right. The only contrast that the eye has is shadows.
I wonder if anyone has hints on how to finish such a carving?
Russ
Hi, I am thrilled. As a new user to PixelCNC I tried to see how well a high detailed cut of 20mm would be delivered in fine grain wood. I found a grey scale photo of jewellery in the shape of a dragonfly.
I used a number of bits, a 1/8” flat, a 1mm ball and a 60degree v-bit. It was amazing to see my machine gradually cut this out, especially the attempt to cut out the wing veins. 1/100mm layers was used to finalise it at 1/2mm depth.
What made this extra special to me was that it done on my home made, designed and built machine done withwith a hack saw, file and drill press.
There were some challenges. One significant one was my dismal start where I couldn’t get anywhere near the resolution of showing any wing details at all. The answer, canvas resolution … 1000pixels did it. Of course the quality of the wood is a significant factor.
For this example I used scrap timber hardwood decking. I’ve no idea what it is. It’s medium hardness not anywhere as hard as Australian Eucalyptus hardwood.
My understanding of the cutting parameters is growing, albeit slowly. My earlier cuts were abandoned as taking far too long. 6 hours and still not finished is the worst and depressing. I did get it down to 2.5 hours. Most of this was in cutting the wing details. Surely I can do better.
Another area for me to grow my understanding is cut type. I need more experience to best know what to use where and when. Currently it looks like the spiral 3D is the most efficient. Profile 2.5d is good too for roughing.
The cutting out of the block worked well when I worked out the offsetting to get the border spacing. I did though need to do trial and error to get the supporting tabs in preferred positions. In the example above I did have a border alignment issue. My mistake done when changing the bit. I need to take more care.
Now I know how detailed I can get I will start progressing to bigger carves. I can fit A3 and in the distant future maybe a sheet A3+A3 long. The challenge is there.
Aluminium is another. Maybe I could try this out on 3mm sheet, make it like a pendent?
What are your challenges?
