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In an effort to reduce the pain of having to wait for my x-carve to arrive, I wanted to show you guys some of my past projects. Here is a sign I did for a friend back in high school on our CNC Shark. Unfortunately I lost the Aspire and gcode files since then, but ill show you how I did it!
First I chose a cool album cover to start. I loaded it into Aspire, and painstakingly traced in all of the vectors by hand. Took a few days to do, but after a test piece I was very happy with the results!
Just wanted to do a test in 1/2 ply to make sure everything went smoothly. Next I cut a piece of solid 3/4 maple and did the real cut with a 90 degree v bit.
I sprayed all of the carving black, and after a few passes through the drum sander, this is the final result! I believe I also framed it in something like walnut and finished it, but I don’t have any more pictures.
Anyway, let me know what you guys think, and if you have any ideas, let me know! I need something to keep me busy when I finally get my new toy. And any future projects I will try to make the files available. Thanks!
Looks great! Not sure what version of Aspire you had access to, but if you do this type of project again, then:
the “Trace Bitmap” button might be of some use to you. I use it all the time to convert two-color graphics into vectors. It has support for translating color images as well, but I haven’t looked into it too much.
Aspire will import a variety of vector graphic formats, and if you’re not satisfied with it’s built-in bitmap tracer, check out Vector Magic - Vector Magic: Convert JPG, PNG images to SVG, EPS, AI vectors - I bought it years back for my vinyl cutting business and it has paid for itself many times over. I haven’t found a vector converter that is easier to use or gives better results.
Thanks! At the moment im running version 4.0 but im not sure what it was then. I’ve used the feature for a ton of projects, but I did quite a few by hand before I realized the feature was there haha. Unfortunately though for this project, I needed very clean and precise lines, and for that image the tracer just wouldn’t cut it. It does work amazing for black and whites though, just did this last night in about 3 min.
