A little 3D texture carving

[handi]

I was playing today with my CNC, experimenting with 3D carving. 
I created this wicker pattern and carved it using a 1/16" ball nosed bit.

Took about an hour to carve this section, 12" by 2". 

The issue with 3D carving is creating the 3D model to begin with, but this came out better than I had hoped.

[Gregory of Sherwood Forest]

That's cheating.

I wish I could afford to cheat with a CNC that size...


Out of curiosity, did you program that yourself, or did you mod an existing program?

[handi]

My CNC Shark working area is only 22" square, lol. I am used to working with 5x10' as a minimum!

The 3D model was completely my doing. Created two 'strips' in SolidWorks of the longer arch with the half round in between. One strip was offset by half of the large arch.

Alternately stacked the two strips together to form the pattern. Then imported the 3D model into Cut3D from Vectric to toolpath it.

Because of the way I created the model, I can easily alter the width of the pattern as well. These were 1/8" wide strips.

[thewizzard]

Looks awesome 
 but is this 3D carving or flat carving 
 

To the extent that all carving has some depth it is all 3d but when I think of 3D carving I think of solid objects like below. To that point, do the small carving machines have the depth cutting cabibility to cut faces deep enough to eventually get a solid object or is this still just the realm of larger CNC set-ups 


Once again, I love your basket wevave 


This is not my work or photo. It just came off a Bing search of 3D carving from a woodweb post and was a good example of what I was refering to above.

[handi]

That could be done with a 5-axis machine, but again, creating the 3D computer model is the real issue. 

I did once use a CNC to rough out blocks for a cylindrical carving like that. We roughed away most of the waste and the carver hand finished the details.

What I did is closer to bas-relief carving, but the 3D model is still the challenge.

[opticsguy]

I like it!!!!!  :-)
How do you get rid of the "fuzz" left over from cutting?

[Arlin Eastman]

Ralph

I really like it and I can see where we can use it on about anything we do here.  What does something like that cost?

[handi]

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Here is the first results of the experiment. Not sanded or finished, but came out alright.

[handi]

No fuzz removal on either photo, both are as they came off the machine.
I used a 1/16" ball nose bit stepping over 0.010" per pass. Came out very clean in nice cherry.

I have done carvings that were fuzzy, a brass brush wheel for a Dremel tool removes the fuzz nicely.

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Arlin,

The carving process takes forever, the 12" by 2" section shown above takes just over an hour. No way could I make money selling the carvings, lol.

I DO plan on making the 3D models available so anyone with a CNC could carve their own. If you know someone who has one, I will be glad to give you the models.

[bennybmn]

That came out great! I don't have a CNC router, but I use 3D cad every day, and one of my favorite things is figuring out better ways to model something. It's a skill, and somewhat of an art for in itself, and something that some old-timers don't understand when they call CNC "cheating". (and I'm not referring to Greg of Sherwood, more guys I know locally) Again, awesome job. If you ever need help modeling something, let me know!