A sad workflow (trying to engrave edgelit photo)

X-Carve
1

Hi guys.

I got my x-carve this month and its probably the best thing I’ve ever purchased (and assembled) in my life. :heart_eyes:

I’ve been destroying a lot of stuff lately but have learned a lot from the forum posts (and experiments).

I was looking for some information about using a diamond drag on a clear acrylic piece (for edge lit signs) and then thought if its possible to engrave a photo somehow. I can’t afford buying photovcarve (is it?) right now. And I’m too new to CNC machining to understand G-Code (image2gcode) stuff.

Having some knowledge about graphic design, I managed to devise a super sad method. It takes too much time to calculate the toolpath and I think I am trying to do something very simple extremely inefficiently,

I would click on the carve button if you guys say the workflow seems fine and I might get some good results.

Help.

Untitled-1.jpg2210×3438 2.29 MB

3

Sorry.

I am trying to attach a picture. I am not being able to do it.

Just a sec.

6

This is how I’m trying to do this…

  1. Convert the photo to greyscale
  2. Convert it to bitmap (using a suitable frequency)
  3. Invert the result
  4. Bring it to vcarve and trace it

It takes ages to calculate the toolpath. And I’m not sure if its worth a try or not.

Is there a better way to do it?

I’m using 100 IPM for the diamond drag bit. (total noob here so forgive my stupidity if that’s not a right feedrate)

7

PicEngrave Pro 5

2 Likes
8

Thanks.

I’ll try the demo! :slight_smile:

1 Like
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17819973_807875506038230_896701882_o.jpg1536×2048 189 KB

This was my first edgelit acrylic sign with a diamond drag bit attempt. Very pleased with the result.

Now hopefully will figure out a way for the photo engraving as well.

10

Have you looked at the free but effective dMap2gCode program from Scorchworks? I use it to carve lithophanes and it works quite well.

11

I did. But I thought it was for 3D carves. What I’m trying to do is barely scratch the surface of the clear acrylic using the diamond drag. Here’s a picture of what I got. It took about 10 minutes to generate the toolpath (probably my slow surface pro 3 at fault here). And it took about 4 hours to carve a 4x6.

I wanna do something similar more efficiently if possible.

17813719_808598915965889_1676744650_n.jpg720×960 137 KB