I've just joined this forum - holy cow! It's HUGE! :banana:
So anyway, I've been a home woodworker sort since birth (my dad always had a shop and I'd made many piles of sawdust in my life). The metalworking is new however...
I bought a Harbor Freight mini-mill a while ago and then an 8x12 lathe. That was the beginning of a new odyssey/obsession. My wife is an artistic sort of person and I've got this bug up my hiney to try to make tools for her. My latest ideas are what brought me here :drowning:
She is looking for molds to make "pressed" objects, like in clay and whatnot. These molds (don't really know what to call them) are more like raised-plate printing dies (don't know what to call them either) and she wants to press patterns from them. Sounds easy, right? Hmmm...
So I went and bought myself a Taig CNC mill and PC. That was the easy part... Heh, heh...
The hard part, of course, is creating the gcode. I've been working with lots of demo software to generate 2D, 2 1/2D and 3D objects and I'm learning a lot. I still don't know which one/two/three to buy, but I'm getting there.
I guess that my question (where I've been heading with this post) deals with the CAD/CAM more than anything - I need to take an idea that's in my brain and put it quickly/cleanly onto a piece of acrylic or whatever, via my Taig. Okay, for those of you who are scratching your heads over this post, try to imagine something simple like a small block of acrylic, 1" by 1". Cut onto this, imagine something simple like a heart - not solid, but an outline (I suppose, a relief?) of the heart. All that remains after the machining process is the raised outline of the heart. The outside and inside are milled away.
This may sound easy to you guys and gals, but I'm starting to think that I should sell my Taig on Ebay...
Not really...
Anyway, I'm looking for software that I could take a simple .jpg or .bmp pic and import it and turn it into one of these "raised" sort of molds/dies/whatever. Then CAM it to gcode.
From what I've found so far, the toolpaths I get are either along the x or y axes and not necessarily a nice, short cut along the outside of the object, with some final cleanup. Going back and forth gives "ridges". I know that I'm not doing this right, but I'm hoping to find software that will make it a bit easier.
If you're still with me in this post ( ), what sort of pointers can you give? Imagine that heart example. Or anything - take a simple pic and turn it into a raised line art sort of gcode. How can I accomplish this?
Thanks!!!!
Mark