Interested in carving real items like tools, remotes etc to make holders that have a good fit. How do you transfer the real dimensions into Easel. For example if i wanted to carve out a holder for crescent wrenches how would i get the accurate shape into easel?
For the crescent wrench you can perform an image trace within Easel. I would take a piece of copy paper and take a photo of the wrench, then use easel’s image trace function to import the photo, then measure the wrench length and adjust the imported design to the correct size. Then you can cut it or make a pocket to set the wrench into.
I you want to make a 3D carving, you can model in Fusion360 (but there is a much steeper learning curve) Here’s an example of modeling a knife handle in Fusion360: How to Create a CAD Model from a Photo in Fusion 360! FF96 - YouTube
Take a picture on grid paper keeping your camera viewer as square to the paper as you can, then bring it into easel. I cut them out of MDF to test fit and adjust from there.
I did a project cut of carbon fiber for the underside of a chevy pickup hood. We basically covered all the holes in the structure of the hood. We used masking tape on the areas we wanted to cover. I pulled the tape off used an angle finder and a ruler, redrew them in Easel to the measurements on the tape. Again we test cut them out of MDF and adjusted the ones we needed to.
I have one of those scanner/copier/printers. If you have one of those you can lay the wrench on the scanner and scan it. You will get a faithful, dimensionally accurate image. You can then use image trace or one of the many online image converters to make your image an SVG.
I don’ t know if anyone in the forum has ever adapted a Z probe to the X-carve, but other machines like the NextWave CNC Shark have probes that attach to the spindle. Software then moves the probe along and up and down. When the probe button touches the wrench it knows how thick the wrench is at that spot. It takes hours, but all of the probe data lets the software determine the 3D shape of the wrench.
Finally, you can google photogrammetry and read about that. With a whole lot of cell phone pictures and the right software, you can get a 3D shape roughed out for you.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.