Wave Surface Software

[Burkhardt]

....What i would be interested in knowing is if you can take the same file you created, i assume it is a stl of the shark in the wavy water, and load it into whatever program you use for creating toolpaths and do just a regular roughing and finishing 3d carving toolpath and tell us what the time difference in overall cutting is? I'd be interested in seeing the time difference.

It would probably not make much difference. Except for the quick direction changes where the wave transitions into the body, I estimate 95% of the tool path along the wave and the body was running at full programmed 150 ipm speed that is 2.5 ips (not 9000 as I wrote earlier). As you can see from the big chips and splinters I was a bit aggressive on the roughing pass. Or maybe the bit is getting dull.
However, since the wave tool path consists of many short lines the file is much bigger than the original cut-3d file and to run full speed the controller must be able to process about 200 x-y-z position lines per second.

.....Was the wave and the shark both cut as one toolpath in both the roughing and finishing toolpaths? .....

Yes

[bob_s]

G Have you done any more work with a wood grain simulator? I want to cut some oak to look old. I do have Aspire, but the 3d cut times are just too long. I remember seeing some work done with cutting between vectors, or other ways. If it can be close and then the surface texture added with a body grinder and a wire wheel that's good was well. If you have any ideas I would love to test them. I have a 4x8 alpha with a spindle.
thanks
Bob

my email is bob at schlowsky dot com if you want to contact me off the forum

[Burkhardt]

Hi Bob,

have not used this much since I made this 30x30x6" piece of water drop wall art and a wave shape bowl that I posted here somewhere. Well, actually I provided wave surface .stl to a few people who asked for it but found most had trouble to import the surface (non-solid) stl into common CAM software.

Anyway, the wood grain simulation was just an idea because the software can do it but it did not find much interest last year so I dropped it. I would actually rather call it a ripple texture that resembles wood grain remotely but I think it might do the job for many purposes.

So, nothing has been done since and I have been working on joints, bowls and maze software instead.

GB

[bob_s]

Ok
Thanks