a little 3d carving

[Steve knight]

I want to do most of this but it sure eats up the time. Plus you have to buy the artwork. these were not bad the little dragon corners were 10.00 and the gecko was 10.00 so thats not bad but some are 50 to 75. so iti s expensive to just play with the. plus the cut time the gecko took about 50 minutes and the dragons about 25 minutes each. I cut these pretty fine to keep sanding down. they can be done faster and take a little more work sanding. it is a trade off in time verses machine time. but since it is for me I don't want to sand anymore then I have too.
here is a panel I did to try to make the art raised and make the rest of the panel flat the next are closeups. then I did the gecko at full depth and got more details. these with cut with a 1/8" ball nose endmill. it's hard to get the details in the pics. finish will help bring it out.

[Rob Wright]

Steve - they look great. Are the the VectorArt 3D files? Did you cut them with 3d Machinist or the new Shopbot Partworks 3D? - Roughing pass? Was the 1/8" ball nose endmill one of the "tapered" ones? I haven't been able to find one of those yet but I have seen video of people using these without a roughing pass.

I cut my first 3d ones two nights ago - they free sample from VectorArt with 3D Machinist on my homebuilt. A 4"x3" took 48 minutes at 20ipm. I think I need to get a 'bot! I struggle with wanting to buy the models right now - cutting them on a homebuilt can be interesting with loosing steps or other electrical interference causing limit switches to activate randomly!

[Steve knight]

yes to all of the software. I imported the cut3d file into vcarve to set it up.
I only used the 1/8" without a roughing pass. but I did the vector toolpath to take the surface down first.
tapered are not hard to find but they are hard to afford. onsrud sells them I think they are over 50.00 each and msc has them fro a little less. I can wait on one (G) 20 imp would drive me nuts. I do it at 300 but you don't get that full speed because of z movement.