Hey everyone, I am a bit of a beginner with my x-carve and really haven’t used it to its full potential yet. I am wondering if its possible for this machine to create a “waving” effect similar to the one in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fifTUPVc100
It seems like its something it should be able to handle, but I have no idea where to even start with programming that. I have not experimented with any of the 3d programs and I would imagine that is what would be needed. Any help is much appreciated!
That’s amazing!
@StevePrior did a sign like that. I bet he can explain how he did it.
@ZachOtten Not much to it in Fusion 360 which is what I’d use for something like this. Draw a rectangle, extrude. Create an angled plane, sketch your curve with arcs and/or splines, extrude. The glue up before the carve would take most of the effort.
I’m happy to help out more if you go that route.
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Yeah, pretty easy in Fusion since it’s not a random pattern like I did, but something fairly easily modeled. But the idea of making a segmented blank and then carving it is pretty cool!
What I did is to generate a random grayscale cloud pattern in GIMP, then use a Fusion plugin to convert that into a height map mesh, then used that mesh to split a solid and then add in lettering and border.
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@ZachOtten do you have any experience in Fusion?
If not and you don’t want to learn I have another idea that might work.
The short answer is yes the X-carve can easily do this. But the catch is the software, you need to design it in a 3D cad program such as Fusion 360 (free) or Solidworks etc. then send it over to the xcarve. Easel is not able to do 3D at the moment.
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I do not have any experience in Fusion, im open to any ideas you have!
OK, now you’ve got me curious.
I would be interested in the method used in Fusion I think I know it but I would love to see how its done 
I have not but I am open to learning the different programs to help me get the most out of my xcarve!
You mean the wavy flag? Create a sketch on the XZ plane, draw a box as a bigger cross section of the stock, then use the spline tool to draw the wavy line through the box. Extrude the bottom half. Then looking from above rotate the model by some angle, create a new sketch, draw a rectangle the final size of the stock you want, then extrude that to the stock thickness and use the intersection of that with the wavy model to create the final model.
@StevePrior
oh okay they I see what you mean so its not a random pattern? you have to define it via the spline?
If I was doing the wavy flag I’d go with the spline method. If you want to do a random pattern then I’d use the other technique I mentioned with a grayscale generated by GIMP and the image2surface plugin in Fusion. Someday I do plan to create a walkthrough video of the GIMP/image2surface method, just haven’t done it yet.
yeah I have always seen the grayscale images and I have wondered how they are made
if you do make a video please let me know and I will watch it
but thank you I will like into that plugin for Fusion
Before I came up with the random grayscale approach I actually did the spline method with the idea of modeling a water ripple. As it turns out it’s pretty difficult to just come up with the profile of a realistic water ripple as they decrease in frequency and amplitude the further away you get. The only difference from the flag technique I mentioned was that I swept the spline in a circular pattern.
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now thats something I have been really wanting to learn is the water ripple effect
is this the spline marked in blue and circle in the center is something seperate?
Almost, the spline is the top surface going down the middle of the piece from the center out - the left edge of the spline was at X=0 and I swept it around the Z axis to create a circle, then cut it to the rectangle shape with another sketch. The center of the circular piece was at the origin (X=0, Y=0) in Fusion.
hmm is there anyway that you can share the file or the spline I guess I am not understand that
