Here is the first of a 3 part set I’ve sold to a customer , Star Wars Villians.
7 Likes
Looks nice What are the settings your using?
size of the picture
size of the work piece
settings you used
I too would love to know your settings if you don’t mind sharing!?
Your piece came out flawless looking!!
I have been struggling with lines. One of the variables I found is in using a painted board vs. Stain. Paint seems to act more as a glue on the surface and helps prevent unwanted chipping when doing lines. As far as settings, I found for lines, that using a spacing of 3, max width of 3.5, and then setting the brightness to -10, and contrast 16, gave good results. here is a 8x11 of a picture of Beyoncé that I did in about 30 minutes. I would suggest doing a google image seach for “gradient test” and use an image that transitions from black to white, and tune your settings using this image. On the white side, you want to ensure that it is just cutting right on the edge of and not deep. One of the things I am trying to do is find a good plywood that has a thick 1st veneer. The ones I find at Lowes seem to be less than 1/32 of an inch. Any suggestions?
2 Likes
Here is my gradient test. they are 6inches by 6 inches on painted plywood. The goal was to get as much transition from dark to light as possible and make the center white as small as possible. These too about 5 minutes each to cut, so it is great for tuning the setting before you cut a picture.
2 Likes
It’s worth running a “leveling pass” over your material with a wide bit first - Basically doing the same thing you did to the surface of the machine to level it. Because the process is very sensitive to the flatness of what you’re cutting (and the machine itself) pre-flattening the material can help quite a bit. Obviously you’d have to paint or stain it after doing this.
It’s also worth mentioning that particle board has a much more consistent interior color than normal wood. If your plan is to leave the exposed cut as-is (not painted or stained) then any color variation in the material, like wood grain, is going to appear as shading in the cut and can sometimes look weird.
Also, whether you’re cutting lines or circles, there has to be enough surface left on your material to hold whatever your surface is to the piece. For example, if you’re cutting melamine and you cut it too thin, it’ll chip off. Try a few small cuts at various settings just to see how the material holds up under the settings you’re using before you try a gigantic piece and burn all that time.
does anyone especially Jason Dorie know if the latest software works well with easel I wanna do a picture of my son in his football uniform but i dont have any ugs and i really dont want to install one so was hoping to just use easel with the gcode created from Jason’s program
I loaded a project last night and it seemed to look ok I ran a ghost cut and it seemed to work ok.
The latest version has a button to generate Easel compatible GCode - I remove the line numbers and the header codes that Easel doesn’t like, so it should be fine. I don’t have an XCarve to test it with, but I haven’t had anyone tell me it doesn’t work, so that’s a good sign.
3 Likes
Halftoner is awesome! Thank you!
1 Like
I’m set up my halftone, but how do I set how far down into the material it goes? I don’t want it to hit my waste board.
The depth is completely controlled by the size of the holes. Using a wider-angle bit as Phil suggests will make shallower holes.
I could add a visual to the display to tell you the deepest possible cut it will make, based on your maximum hole size. The math is easy, and already done elsewhere in the code.
MaxDepth = (MaxDiameter/2) / Tangent(BitAngle/2)
So, for a 60 degree bit, and 1/8" diameter holes:
MaxDepth = (0.125 / 2) / Tan(60/2)
MaxDepth = 0.108"
For a 60 degree bit and 1/4" holes:
MaxDepth = (0.25 / 2) / Tan(60/2)
MaxDepth = 0.216"Ok. So I think I got the depth thing down. But if I’m doing a lined halftone. How do I know the depth per pass. I don’t want to go to deep the first time and either mess up the machine or ruin the V-Bit. I’m using the halftone software by the way. I think it’s halftoner 1.7.
I don’t change any defaults, only giving job size, choosing lines or dotes and sending thru UGS.
Always comes up very clean result. Let’s take a look at this picture one more time;
1 Like
It only does one pass, and lines work the same as dots - Halftoner controls the depth. Unless you’re making very large holes (like, larger than 1/4" in diameter) you’re not likely to damage anything. Start with a conservative feed rate if that makes you more comfortable.
how to set spacing and max size? I have a bad cut if spacing and max size are the same or spacing is smaller than max size .
Spacing is how far apart the dots will be, and ‘Max Size’ is how big the largest dots will be. If you make them the same, it means the dots (or rows of lines) will touch. If that happens, fragile surface materials like paint mask or melamine will likely break off. For hard materials like anodized aluminum it’s ok to make them really close.
Max Size should not be bigger than spacing. I usually make Max Size about 10% to 20% smaller than spacing - for example, 3.3mm spacing, 3.0mm max size. If the result doesn’t leave enough surface material, you can leave the spacing, but reduce the Max size a little. ‘Dots’ mode is a little less sensitive to the spacing being too tight, because it leaves more material in general.
Here is a thought. I know its months later…
How bout you create internal color by using thin wood sheets and dying them?
You can get thin sheets and die each piece then glue them up. Once they are dry you can then carve based on depth.