I thought it would be cool to have a thread where people can throw out their ideas... I'm new to CNC so I expect to be surprised at everything that's possible... and everything that isn't...

Unless your overly protective of your 'intellectual material'... post a picture of your idea... show everyone what's possible with these machines... or let other people tell you that it's not possible (and then you can prove them wrong)...

There is a big DIY CNC community, lots of youtube videos and people with shopbots etc... but I haven't been able to find any threads like this anywhere...

it would be cool to dissect the process on how to a make a piece, from idea to sketch to the various softwares involved to part layouts to cutting to assembly... (How easy is the entire process if you use Rhino vs Sketchup with the STL plugin for example)

I don't expect to do this right away... but one of the first things I want to try, is a thai wood panel... they are usually made of oak or teak... i'm not sure what i'll use for my finished project yet. i know my friends will be getting some panels made out of pine or MDF while i'm testing it...

i'm hoping to be able to trace various patterns from images found on the net and then kind've piece them all together to create one good design... throwing in my own artistic capabilities as well...

i'd like to end up with a 4 foot diameter circular piece, that i can throw a piece of acrylic on top of and make it into a coffee table...

here's an example of a panel i like... some of the panels are 4" thick

An idea: it might be possible to carve that pattern out of the back/bottom of a thick piece of acrylic... would probably look sweet.

I don't have any big plans myself* (if/when I get mine built) but I gotta say that the image above is an excellent example of something that really shows off what a 3 axis CNC machine can do.

Do you happen to know if that particular piece was made with a CNC machine?

*Let me rephrase: I don't have any developed plans

Here is one site that has a lot of great pictures. It is where the picture above is from. http://www.nongnit.com/teakcarving.htm

the inverted acrylic idea would be sweet... awesome idea!

i've been trying to learn about the different styles of woodworking to gain some more ideas as well... another intriguing style is islamic.

like this seljuk style Quran Stand


or this wooden column in Kiva


and i can't remember where i grabbed this image from... but it's amazing!

I hope it's ok if I reply to this thread... I am trying to build my own CNC machine, seeing as I can't afford (or have wife approval) for even a micRo. Hopefully you will all find this useful anyway.

My first idea is to make a lithophane of a favorite picture. If you don't know, a lithophane is a picture carving that shows up when backlit. For example,
Here is an unlit lithophane: Click to view attachment

Here is a backlit lithophane: Click to view attachment

The idea is to find a translucent material (not transparent), such as corian, and cut away areas for a greyscale image. The more material you cut away, the more light will show through. If you leave 1/32" of material, it will appear brighter when backlight than a section where you leave 1/8" of material. Varying the depths of your cuts gives you the different levels of "grey".

I am not sure that my homemade CNC machine would be able to cut this, so my second idea is to make drink coasters. The flare that I would add, though, is to carve pictures into the face of the coaster using V-Groove Machining. The idea is to cut away material from the coaster for darker sections, where the more you cut away, the darker the section will be. The cut-away grooves then have to be filled with a darker contrasting color. It is probably best shown with pictures.
The wider grooves will look darker:
Click to view attachment
Full picture:
Click to view attachment

All of these photos are from the Vectric Website, showing the capability of their PhotoVCarve software. Of course, the software isn't free. But, Brainchild was kind enough to point out that EMC2 has a built in program called Image-to-gcode that looks like it does the lithopane stuff for free.
I then found a webiste where you can order 4"x4" corian samples for $2 each (shipping extra). So, using EMC2 and the corian samples, I can try my hand at lithophanes for fairly cheap. I am not sure how I would manage the V-Groove machining without buying the PhotoVCarve software.

yes Yes YES!... ideas and the execution of said ideas!

Pirin, I knew a little bit about lithopane in theory and now I know what it's called... thank you. for some reason the first idea that came into my head after reading your post were the giant rice paper walls / partition screens used in japanese houses. I wanted to make a false wall out of handmade rice paper and then back light it... glowing japanese walls maybe throw in some blade runner-esque concrete cabinetry.

Pirin thats some neat stuff I say you combine the first one with your coasters........ put some battery power LED in there for the backlight

Thanks for the suggestion. I am having a hard time sorting out the details of this. My first thought was to use a button cell battery to power the coaster. But that won't last 50,000 hours (or whatever the LED lifetime is). So that means that the coaster would have to light up in reaction to something and then turn off to conserve power.

If it lights up on pressure, like when a mug is placed in the coaster, it defeats the purpose as the mug will cover the picture.

I then thought that maybe the release of pressure would trigger the light, and it would stay lit for a pre-determined amount of time, or until pressure is reapplied. Of course, I have absolutely no idea how to do this.

My last thought is about how all this would be contained (the corian, the LED, the battery, and the circuitry). I wouldn't want the coasters to be too thick, maybe 1/4" at the most. If the corian is reduced to 1/8", that only leaves 1/8" for everything else. I suppose 3mm LEDs could be used, but that leaves no thickness for the overall enclosure (or any gap for the LED light to dispurse evenly).

I am not trying to slam your idea. It is actually really cool. I just can't seem to think through the whole thing successfully. Heck, 4"x4" seems like a perfect size for a coaster. If anyone has any ideas, that would be great!

Hey, I just thought of something. Has anyone seen those really thin night lights. The ones I have seen are blue, but they are a very thin pad that lights up uniformly. I wonder if something like that is available in white and if it is bright enough for a lithophane?
Something like this: Click to view attachment

i don't care who replies to this thread... i don't care if it just turns in a list of images of cool stuff people like...

there's my disclaimer for posting this...

My intended use is just for pieces and parts for other projects that I may or may not even build.

I was going to start off by doing some engravings from photos, just to see how they turn out and I happen to have a ready market for such things. If they turn out well enough I should actually be able to make enough to pay for the micRo. I didn't know the term was lithographing, but that's exactly how my wife carves pumpkins, and they turn out amazing! I didn't think about using that technique on something like Corian. Hmmmm,. Now that's a good one. Anyway, this isn't what I WANT to do with my micRo, but it is something that will probably put it to better use.

My goal is to have a RoGR one day, again for no real intended use other than bigger stuff. I'm hoping that when I have the capabilities the opportunities will present them selves.

He who dies with the most (cool) toys wins.

I'll got a number of dirt bike parts I want to machine out of aluminum. Figuring some of this stuff is $40 for a $2 block of aluminum to buy for the bikes they actually make it for and some parts are well over $200 for maybe $30 of stock. So, beings my whole family rides, my micRo could pay for itself in the savings from buying those parts. Then again I've got a fair enough sized market I could make parts for friends and friends of friends, and guys I race with etc.

Other than that, I'd like to make some more acrylic computer cases just for fun. I've made them in the past but never with more than a dremel tool and a plastic cutter. Then again, I've also been wanting to get back into robotics, being a software developer and a mad tinkerer, I can't get enough of playing with logic and finding solutions to problems that don't exist yet. So, I am planning on making a 'base' for some robotics projects - the base resembling a tank with a turntable I can bolt the modular arm/projecter/camera/etc. to.

I've got sketches from at least the last 10 years of all kinds of things I've never had the capacity to make. So, I'm going to start making some of them. My job right now is very boring and I don't get to exercise my brain at all, so some mental stimulation it is.

There is a fair amount of stuff I would like to do, I think every project has the potential for a little Robotics automation thrown in. I do have, how ever one thing I would really like to do above all.

Robotics and CNC can take guitar building to a whole new level for me.

From carving your body, top, neck and fret board to extreme pearl inlays. Making that perfect bronze nut, or manufacturing your own custom Floyd Rose Bridge. Almost every task in building an electrical guitar can be aided by cnc, and once you designed it and built one, you have the files and the process to make it that much quicker the next time around. Where I live custom guitars fetch a fair price at the art shows around here.

Being able to reproduce a design quickly would be pretty sweet, it would allow for quick recreation of a project with different materials. Guitar building is alot about matching the right woods for ideal sound resonance and tone, creating the right sized cavity to get the perfect tone in a semi holow body and so forth.

Some pictures and videos of cnc'd inlays and guitar bodies.

CNC Machine retrofitted with a saw. The saw is programmed to cut all of the fret channels working up the neck, after it is done, a technician will clean the grooves and start fretting the guitar.

Video 1

Home made CNC router carving a guitar neck out of pine (just a trial run). This person’s result is pretty good.

Video 2

K2 using their CNC to cut a pretty cool looking electric body, this is a solid body design with out a split top.

Video 3

Custom Luth. doing a neck inlay. These guys do some great work, but they also have commercial equipment.

Video 4

Some cool inlay designs that could be achieved with CNC.







Body Inlays






-Cory

Make inlay logo's for my hardwood flooring company. (The main purpose for the machine and so it can pay for it.)
And for some fun stuff.
Custom panels and knobs for DIY audio gear.
My kids think a Pokemon sphere would be nice.
And some custom hinges for an old fridge.

Who knew that 'data' from Start Wreck builds high-end fiddles?

has anybody ever made or ran across plans for japanese puzzle boxes?

here are 2 pictures from the 324-step super cubi

Here's another forum which discusses puzzle boxes Sawmill Creek Woodworking forum

How about a real cool case mod.



Personally I want to see a really good borge cub case mod. Brainchild in another forum mentioned that it's easy to carve from a photo with the greyscale mapped to Z depth, so something like a borqe cube might be an easy project.

That's one of the thing I want to do too. I think it would be awesome to build a custom aluminum case around your motherboard and components. You could cut custom fan holes/ducts pointed directly at the intake ports of your CPU, north/south bridge, RAM, and video card heatsinks. And use giant heatsinks to attach the hard drives. Maybe even some kind of giant passive heatsink for everything? I think my current computer is going to last me years into the future, I'd say it's worth building a real nice case for it.

How difficult would this be to accomplish with CNC?

How many steps from start to finish, do you think?

Not easy, but easier than by hand, unless your time is practically worthless.

Could you briefly state the process of how you would do something like that?

I'm guessing you would need an outline first, and cut in the details afterwards. I'm still relatively clueless on how CNC machines operate (can't watch videos - my phone line here doesn't even give me 56kbps) and perform detailed actions like the contours of that wood panel.

Once, on Discovery Channel, I watched a group of engineers CNC a detailed mask from a picture; but they did not show all of the steps involved, I'm sure.

In order to have smooth curved radii on the surface like that you need to use a true 3D operation often called 'carving'. For your panel, several tools and operations would be performed, like "roughing", "engraving", "pocketing", "carving" and "finish cutting", yet "carving" is itself a catch-all for these ops, like "milling" etc. This is of course post-file which has already been cam'd. For what is required pre-gcode; it depends a lot on what you have to start with... The actual piece to be dubbed? A picture of the piece? A 3D drawing you made? A cuneiform description on stone tablets? etc etc

Ages ago when building our house we bought some cast iron grates for our heating/cooling system. I hand cut some from 1/4 inch thick oak panels for our dining room so that I could stain them to match the wallpaper. I never got around to doing any for the rest of our house since my "free" time has become more rare with each passing year. So, I hope to do some of these. This is the template I used for the ones I hand cut. Just simple geometric shapes copied and pasted at a repeating offset. The dark sections indicate what was cut/drilled out. Tedious.

Click to view attachment

Here's a commercial piece.

Click to view attachment

I'm an avid flightsimmer... (WWII stuff - I mainly fly IL2 Sturmovik online).

I'm hoping to use a micRo to create backlit panels for my cockpit project, something along these lines:









I'm also into flight stick mods, so I hope to be able to design and build new parts for my setup.

~S~

Sweet

How about morphing one into an automatic chainsaw sharpener?

This is a lower cost unit at I think about $3,000.

http://www.dinasaw.com.au/Chainsawpage.htm



This is the $20,000 Franzen

http://www.franzen-maschinen.de/e_pages/e_...hnik/SA_6_e.php

Pfft, too easy!

4 u maybe. Was that gas or do you have indigestion?

You could smell that?

I figured I'd post up some of the things I'd like to make...these are dirt bike parts.



Amongst other things, I thought I might look into making some of these... It's a billet clutch cover (this one for a KTM). I'll have to get the ruler out and check my bike to see the thickness of the clutch cover, but I think it should be plausible. I don't think it exceeds 1.5" thick and should be in the neighborhood of a 6" square piece of stock. Only thing is it might be cost prohibitive vs. buying one - but making two or four could knock the price in DIY favor. Seems like it'd be a fairly simple set of operations: drill, pocket, <flip>, profile. Advantages to it include, besides being some bling, is that it's stronger than the stock cast magnesium covers - or plastic for a lot of bikes. Also, there are a lot of bikes this are not available for.



Another item, this is a block that protects the clutch slave cylinder from the chain wedging rocks in between the two, or in the event of a chain break, from tearing out the side of the engine case. Should be a real simple piece as well, but invaluable when it's needed.



This one is a real kicker. It's a mount for hand guards. One end of the guard goes into the end of the handlebar, the other bolts to the end of this, and this around the bar. It's can be made from a 2"x3"x1" piece of aluminum - but this set pictured is ~$45. The cheapest ones are in the range of $30.

Anyway, those are a few of the items I'm working on. The top one being the only one I'd have my doubts on.

Piece o' cake.

The actual machining wouldnt be a problem, the hardest part would be the program to do it.
I do alot of cnc machining here (i own a cnc shop) and generating a program such as that makes me shudder
I assume you wouldnt need to generate to micron tolerance, but would still be a hefty program

As for the CAD side of making the patern ....................... yeah would take some time, but once you have it it's easy

Really? A few pocketing ops and a contour outline? What is hard?

All,

I was hoping to do a case mod for a laptop I have.

I need a keyboard stand. (I would only be able to machine the connectors)

Some custom parts for a jewlrey/puzzle box I'm trying to make for my girlfriend. Seriously doubt I'll have it by the time that's due though. (Christmas)

A sword, I know I'll do it at some point.

I'll probably take a shot at making some tools. I'm not really sure how well that will work out though...

I'm certain that when I first get one up and running, I'll just try my hand at some basic brackets and some curved structures.

-out