Something a bit different

[denver]

I thought it would be interesting to do something a bit different with a couple of the vectorart3d models I have, so I came up with this, grapes on one side, dragon on the other:

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Then I started thinking about how to actually make one of those. That turned out to be a little more difficult, but a suggestion from Lex at DeskProto made the difference. Here's a photo of the work in progress:

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And here are a couple photos of the finished project:

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I used foam because it's so forgiving and I've got a bunch left over from a previous job.

Thanks,

Denver

[khalid]

Wow.. Thats an extraordinary work
... In which software you created the base work...

Thanks for sharing with us

[myxpykalix]

You could have made it flat on each side but NOOOOO you had to go and show off and make it all complicated! lol

What software did you use to create your model pictured above? I understand how you could apply models to the surface but how do you manipulate the surface to create the twist in it?
How were you able to carve it so thin and curved and not have the lateral pressure make it break?
Very Nice!!

[scottbot]

That is sooo cool.

[phil_o]

I really like it.

[audiodemon]

Very cool!

[khalid]

The first picture seems to be in Artcam.. But i don't know how he made the twist.. similar effect can be done in any 3D software...


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[denver]

Thanks everyone.

I used Blender to make the model. There's a function that spreads any transform out to adjacent vertices, edges, faces. I used that with a linear modifier, selected the end vertices and rotated them. In the end though, that's not the model I used to do the carving.

The problem I ran into was that I needed to have the tool raster perpendicular to the axis of rotation, while stepping along the other axis and rotating. So I made toolpaths from the untwisted version, and modified them to add the rotation whenever there was a step in the X direction. My axis of rotation is parallel to X. A tool called awk made short work of that.

I made roughing and finishing passes for each side. The roughing was done with a 1/4" ball, and went down to within 0.1" of the final surface. I took off 0.25" at a time, with a 0.125" stepover. The finishing pass was with a 0.125" ball. I think if it was any thinner I would have had trouble.

Thanks,

Denver

[Brady Watson]

Pretty cool, Denver. I've found foam to be a bit too flimsy to really hold up against deflection. Trupan machines really nicely & is a good alternative to HDU ($$$) foam for messing around.

-B

[denver]

Hi Brady,

Yes, Trupan is nice. I just happened to have a bunch of 2.5" thick Styrofoam scraps left from a previous job that I could make nice 5" and 7.5" square blanks with. It didn't work well for the 5 cylinder crankshaft I tried carving though. And it was such an appealingly inappropriate material to use, too.

Thanks,

Denver

[carlosgmarroquin]

Are you talking about UNIX AWK where you program a processor for a text file?

[denver]

Hi Carlos. Yes UNIX awk. It's a great tool for manipulating text files.

[carlosgmarroquin]

Thank you. I did some programing in the 90's with awk. is good to konw that there is another tool for the toolpath manipulation