m0llusk
06-20-2011, 08:01 PM
In an old building there is a decorative textured cover over the lower third of the hallway walls. This textured cover is made of fiberous mat panels with a flower pattern pressed into the outside to a depth of about 3mm. This material is not robust and has been crushed or torn in several places. It would be good to construct patches to restore the damaged areas. Ideally this could be set up so that any future damage could be easily patched with the same methods and possibly reuse models and materials.
In my modest experience so far I have been using Shopbot PRT alpha at TechShop with various modeling tools (VCarve Pro, Cut3d, Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator) to make wooden gears and legs for a crawler robot. This is a different kind of project.
First, the texture needs to be modeled. I have pictures of the texture, but it might be better to rent a laser scanner? In the computer graphics world there are programs to make textures from pictures, assuming there is a visible shadow without too much complication, but real world use requires some sophistication. What would be a good way of modeling the wall texture?
Second, a material needs to be chosen. It seems like MDF might work, but for robustness it might be best to use a hardwood. Most likely would be to patch a small damaged area, but it might make sense to remake entire panels. Only 3mm of texture is needed, but the mat itself is deeper than that. Ideally patches would fit exactly in the existing holes, which kind of goes back to modeling as well.
Third, given a material choice, what kind of milling bits will give the best results. With this small depth to work with would it make sense to cut the detail directly, or should a rough cut be done first?
Any advice for how best to do about this would be most appreciated. This seems like a fairly straightforward and potentially common use for Shopbot, but so far I have not found anyone else at TechShop or in this forum doing this kind of decorative panel thing.
There are pictures of the texture and damaged areas here:
http://bibble.org/wallpatch/wallpatch.html
In my modest experience so far I have been using Shopbot PRT alpha at TechShop with various modeling tools (VCarve Pro, Cut3d, Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator) to make wooden gears and legs for a crawler robot. This is a different kind of project.
First, the texture needs to be modeled. I have pictures of the texture, but it might be better to rent a laser scanner? In the computer graphics world there are programs to make textures from pictures, assuming there is a visible shadow without too much complication, but real world use requires some sophistication. What would be a good way of modeling the wall texture?
Second, a material needs to be chosen. It seems like MDF might work, but for robustness it might be best to use a hardwood. Most likely would be to patch a small damaged area, but it might make sense to remake entire panels. Only 3mm of texture is needed, but the mat itself is deeper than that. Ideally patches would fit exactly in the existing holes, which kind of goes back to modeling as well.
Third, given a material choice, what kind of milling bits will give the best results. With this small depth to work with would it make sense to cut the detail directly, or should a rough cut be done first?
Any advice for how best to do about this would be most appreciated. This seems like a fairly straightforward and potentially common use for Shopbot, but so far I have not found anyone else at TechShop or in this forum doing this kind of decorative panel thing.
There are pictures of the texture and damaged areas here:
http://bibble.org/wallpatch/wallpatch.html