In an exciting trade where we are trying our best to support you to the best of our abilities, we need tools and materials which we understand and can use. I will enjoy it very much to introduce you to a number of these.
Wood is certainly one of the most usable and versatile materials that we can use. The attached photo is mostly Supawood and whilst some is coloured, some comes in various thicknesses. This type of wood can be cut in almost any profile with laser. The thicker the wood, the slower is the cutting process if you have a limitation in the laser power.
When a bigger laser (More KW) is available even the cutting of steel is possible. The most common materials used in our trade is 3 and 6 mm wood. Supawood can also be painted but if you are looking for a smooth and uniform thickness, then it helps to buy wood that is already coloured. When we buy cutting plans from the USA it is good to remember that some plans are still in imperial and that they have to be adjusted or redrawn. The wood thicknesses there are also still in imperial.
The left or upper picture gives us a picture of the availability in coloured wood. The other two pictures gives us an idea of the amount of Perspex and/or other manufacturer's products that are available. There are also materials available with special effects. For example, some materials have interesting light bending capabilities when LED lights are shining through them.
There are also a multitude of fonts available to enrich you product and with the material available, you can make your decorations colourful.
Working with Hard Woods.
Click here to see a short video.
2 mm Ball nose cutter was used for the engraving of the emblem and a 6 mm Ball nose to cut and finish the rest of the handle. The material was Oak and the handle was first cut on one side and then the other.
With hard wood like oak, yellow wood etc. and a router the picture changes somewhat and a lot more can be done. With this, as can be seen above, 3D profiles and surfaces can be cut. You can see how the emblem was cut. The finer details of what you can cut depends on the type and shapes of the tools. (Sizes of ball nose and engraving tools). A good CNC Router can handle these type of profile cutting and engraving if your supporting software is able and powerful enough to feed the CNC. The importance of this software and the capability that we have to use the software, forms the backbone of your required 3D creation. The capability for your CNC to work 360 Degrees around a piece work falls in the next category and requires additional software and hardware. A CNC Lath or a 4th Axes on your CNC Router will help to do this.
This is a small 4 x 4 vehicle which was created by 3D software and cut from a piston (aluminium). Your capability to create and/or to use 3D Software is imperative to do this type of cutting. To engrave or cut a face, for example, it is essential that it would have to be digitally generated in full 3D.
There are however many profiles (reliefs) that is available in 3D and we are not stopped to do our creations of faces on materials and with tools available. When it becomes necessary there are a few techniques, however limited, to even use photos to create your masterpiece.
Have a look at the previous and following photo's. Firstly, I was looking for a mirror type material that I could cut. (Acrylic) My choice was gold which I believed worked out very well. The photo is my grand daughter, Talita. The next photo is the back side of the mirror that was carved with a V Bit in raster form. The photo was modulated into this raster cut by our software to generate the cut as shown in the full picture, with a close by picture on the left.
The overall result of the cut can be seen in the next photo. Keep in mind that you are looking at the front of the mirror and if you should stand right in front of the mirror to take the picture, you would have seen yourself as well. It is for this reason that you also see the mirror is tilted slightly to the right when we took the picture.
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