I've just been asked to put a neighbour's image on some timber, for his gravestone. The family wanted a picture of him driving his old Fordson tractor.
I played around with Enroute's toolpathing, and made a lithophane in acrylic, which is OK, but it's not in timber. I tried the same paths in timber, then tried the inverse/opposite and both look pretty poor in timber for what I was trying to achieve.
I was wondering if anyone here has tried, or has Photo V-carve, and could give me an opinion or a rundown on how/why it is different from the lithophane creation?
Alternately if I emailed the small picture, and some tool geometry & details, whether they could path is and send back the PLT/hpgl file of the program, so I could see how it compares with this photo?
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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EnRoute has the ability to do what they call Rapid picture as an engraving. It looks pretty cool and is very different than a lithopane,
-grampa dan
-------------------- Dan Sawatzky Imagination Corporation Yarrow, British Columbia dan@imaginationcorporation.com http://www.imaginationcorporation.com
Being a grampa is one of the the most wonderful things in the world!!! Posts: 8738 | From: Yarrow, B.C. Canada | Registered: Nov 1998
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Ian, have you tried the demo software at the Vectric's site?. It will export some samples so you can machine them your self to see exactly what goes on..
Also there is a number of threads at the vectric.com site that gives a ton of information..
The best way for me to explain it is that... Lithophane is a 3D rendition of a photo.
Photvcarve uses lines of various widths to simulate a photo.
They are using a ball nose setting to make tool paths but using a v bit to cut..
-------------------- Leaper of Tall buildings.. If you find my posts divisive or otherwise snarky please ignore them. If you do not know how then PM me about it and I will demonstrate. Posts: 5274 | From: Im a nowhere man | Registered: Jul 2001
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Thanks... Dan, I didn't know about ER's rapid picture - but I don't have the newest version-unless it's hidden in version 3.5 somewhere, and I thought I was relatively up on what it did have...
Curtis, I did download the trial, and if I wasn't penny pinching at the moment, I'd probably buy PhotoV-groove, except that this job is one of those which is more of a favour than a money job. I'd just like to be able to run a sample of this photo to show them.
Thanks for the explanation though-ballnose for pathing & vee for cutting makes some sense, in a queerish way, both mathematically & in reality. Is the vee best at 60-degrees, or sharper, do you know?
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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Actually, looking at a tutorial on ER's Rapid Picture, HERE, and looking at Photo V carve's explanation makes me wonder if I could convert a picture in Photoshop to lines of varying width, then fudge a method engraving that, even if they're parallel lines, not the nice wavy ones from ER. It's interesting that Rapid Picture is on the website labelled Enroute3.. but it seems to be a feature in an upgrade or more recent version of 4.
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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I think I may have something that could work, converting a Greyscale image to Bitmap, via halftone, with zero degrees, "Line" as the shape, and I'm not sure what frequency- but I'm guessing at something close to 1/2mm each, or 50 lpi... but a bit coarser might be better.
That'll give me black & white image which ER can then interpret as highs & lows, or else maybe I'll need to vectorise it in Corel, to pick up the outlines/edges of the black lines, and then vee-groove/engrave toolpath that result...
I'm only looking at trying to do a photo at 7"x5" all up, though.
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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Signlab has that feature that it takes a bitmap image and converts it over to thick/thin lines to create a vector picture like you wanted to do. That can be exported as a plt file or what ever you normally send to your cnc software. You can adjust the number of lines etc to get the look and density that will create the look you want and it's a vector, so you con play with the nodes to do any corrections you like.
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Well I made the picture into a 'lined' halftone after increasing the contrast a bit,and lifted the resolution too (forst) then saved the BMP and imported it into Corel & vectorised it, then imported the AI file into Enroute, and toolpathed it as an engraving path.
It was a bit time consuming, but I'll test it in a couple of days.
I also donwloaded the Photo V-carve trial-and thought that maybe it would not allow saving or cutting except on their trial images, but it did-with a watermark, so I'll try that later too. It was very smooth sailing, setting it up-the only issue is our router doesn't feature in the list-so I chose Multicam PLT mm as the option. Technically it's been retrofitted to become a Tekcel K series, which saves as (HPGL) PLT files. Origin lower left corner.
I'm not sure how our router driver will take to those particular PLT files, but we can only try.
Thanks, Sandy. Sounds like what I was getting via Photoshop, but more smoothly.
-------------------- "Stewey" on chat
"...there are no limits when you aim for perfection..." Jonathan Livingston Seagull Posts: 7014 | From: Highgrove via Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia | Registered: Dec 2002
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Ian, if your trial run doesn't work the way you want and you run standard G code, if you give me about qa week I'll do it in artcam for you and send you the G code.
-------------------- Dave Sherby "Sandman" SherWood Sign & Graphic Design Crystal Falls, MI 49920 906-875-6201 sherwoodsign@sbcglobal.net Posts: 5397 | From: Crystal Falls, MI USA | Registered: Apr 1999
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