#MESHCAM ART TUTORIAL SERIES#
#MESHCAM ART TUTORIAL MAC#

#MESHCAM ART TUTORIAL MAC#

And because of that, I was limited to MeshCAMВ (no disrespect, I quite like it, but one of the few mac apps for CNC I could find) for all my 3d-mesh carving. IвЂ™d been stuck on an old Macbook Air for all my CAD/CAM work for the past number of years. In conclusion, I found this to be really satisfying project, and it looks great hanging on my living-room wall.

#MESHCAM ART TUTORIAL SERIES#

HereвЂ™s a series of photos showing the process:ДЄ shot in Maya, while I got the text arranged: The result was a lot of small up/down z-travels, that really slowed it down overall. I think I could speed up the rough-cut even more by not using MeshCAMвЂ™s вЂUse 3D RoughingвЂ™ option : while it makes a nice looking roughcut, who cares, itвЂ™s all getting cut out anyway.DidnвЂ™t have any trouble during the rough. Maybe itвЂ™s time to get some new electronics? That really slowed down the finish pass. I think the poor Arduino Uno couldnвЂ™t handle the fast feedrate during the rough terrain parts: The whole thing would start & stop over and over (giving me an anxiety attack at first), while the buffer caught up with the operations.Applied a вЂnaturalвЂ™ Minwax stain, and вЂњBlue LagoonвЂќ satin paint.Used Universal GcodeSender to send the cam to the machine.Used MeshCAM for the toolpath generation.Used Autodesk Maya for all the mesh modification, and text creation.Very little sanding was needed, based on the 10% stepover during the finish pass.I tried a faster z-feed, but the machine couldnвЂ™t raise the spindle that fast, and chaos ensued. Roughcut feed for Z was 20вЂі/min, finish pass was 40вЂі/min : I had to modify my firmware to get these speeds.Roughcut feed for X/Y was at 150вЂі/min, finish pass was at 210вЂі/min.25вЂі ballnose for both passes, DeWalt router on speed 1. The piece measures 17Г—30вЂі, and about 1.75вЂі deep.Then the stars aligned, and I realized one was the perfect shape to do a cnc topo map of the whole bay area. Some friends and I took a trip to Firewood Farms in Half Moon Bay, where I picked up a couple slabs of redwood, without really knowing what I was going to do with them at the time. In fact, a year before the X-CarveвЂ™s arrival, IвЂ™d 3d printed the (lower half) of the San Franisco Bay Area, which I felt turned out well. I had great success with Denali & Lake Tahoe, but always wanted to do something bigger. Ever since then, I thought it would be perfect to do topo maps. I bought & assembled my X-CarveВ cnc during Christmas, 2015. Xcarve Comments Off on New CNC Cut : Anchorage To Talkeetna Turned out beautiful, and I look forward to seeing it at our cabin next time IвЂ™m up there. Measure over a foot wide, and around 30вЂі tall. 25вЂі ballnose endmill), and pencil cleanup (on the text, with 1/8вЂі tapered 2-flute upcut ballnose) passes I did some sanding, stained it, then applied the paint for Cook Inlet, and the major rivers in the area. I cleaned this up in Autodesk Maya, added the text, and send this to MeshCAM where I generated the toolpath for my X-Carve CNC:ДЄfter a combined 6 hours for the rough, finish (both with a 3-flute upcut. Using terrain2stl, I captured the terrain between my hometown (Anchorage) and the region our cabin is at (Talkeetna). It took 9 hours with rough + finish, mainly because of all the height variation and the 1/8вЂі tapered ballnose I used for the finish:ДЄrmed with that test success, I moved onto my next piece. Realized it would make a great Christmas gift to give it back to them with some art.ДЄs a test piece, since IвЂ™d never used this wood before, I turned some clouds from the SW corner of JupiterвЂ™s Great Red Spot into a height map, and cut that. I brought that back to CA, and for the longest time have been thinking what to cut on it. When I was at our familyвЂ™s cabin in the Talkeetna (Alaska) area last, my father gave me some birch from our property heвЂ™d felled, milled, and planed.

Meshcam art tutorial