I was wondering if anyone has tried cutting the corrugated roofing. I would love to cut out animals and such and would welcome any tips or warnings.
yes, the stuff you get at Lowes, relatively thin
There wouldn’t be an “easy way” to make the machine follow the wavy shape normally that stuff is plasma cut by hand or cnc plasma…
Hmm the waviness of it would be a pain to clamp and cut.
And then cutting steal would be tricky too. Far to big to put in a oil bath.
Better of trying the fiberglass panels first.
Due to the challenges of the wavy material I think it would be easier to use the XC to cut templates of the shapes you want. Then use those as guides to cut the actual material with other tools.
Maybe make some kind of jig / support with “bumps” to line up under the waves to support the material and keep it flat and in place?
With the fiberglass you could probably use a router with some kind of bushing guide / template setup.
With the steal maybe make the equivalent jig version for a jig saw or plasma cutter?
Get a sheet of wood, cut a wavy pattern in it along with your animal carving, then paint it grey. 
What would be cool is to have a method of scanning the material surface dynamically and adjusting the Z height as the carve processed. Kinda like the dynamic altimeter on a cruise missile and how it hugs the curvature of the earth.
Estlcam can map a surface that isn’t flat, and then will cut a design according to that surface. I just posted a video of it yesterday in Phil’s PCB thread
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This is why I said there wasn’t an (easy) way to do it. Get a piece of paper make a template tape it to the metal and get a pair of good ole tin snips and cut them out i’ve done a bunch of letters and shapes this way…oh and wear leather gloves.
Granted, but the main problem with corrugated material is that is isn’t supported enough and will flex during carving. Thin steel plate will grab the bit and you will have problems.
Oh yeah absolutely. I wasn’t suggesting using tin roofing on an xcarve, it was more just on the topic of non-flat surfaces to be honest.
I can’t see any way to cut corrugated stuff with success, unless you went crazy with some kind of top and bottom frame that fit the curves of the sheet and could clamp together somehow.
Corrugated and CNC cutting don’t go together unless you had a plasma cutter
There is a way to get a reading of the uneven surface.
Chillipeppr does this.
Also if your using Mach3 then gcode ripper can do this.
Great idea. I’ve made some really cool sculptures in the past with galvanized corrugated roofing and muriatic acid to age it. Clamp the crap out of it, use a downcut spiral bit and make your DOC pretty conservative to start out with…
Cannible nibbler
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