Memorial lithophane

[Stickman]

This is a 6.75" x 4.5" lithophane made a day ago for the memorial service of Warner Wong, who was the successor to the Tai Chi school founded by my teacher, the late John Wong. It took two tries; first was on my older CNC Shark, which I've used for many of these. 80% of the way through the piece (630,000 lines of code) the Bosch Colt router burned up! This completed piece was done on a Legacy Arty with a water cooled spindle, the first lithophane I've done on this machine.

[kilrabit]

Very nice, Great detail.

Would you mind giving your settings, bit, and thickness? I like to compare with all of the previous posts, of other lithophanes.




Roy

[Stickman]

.25" corian (arctic white), cut depth set at .20". The bit was one of those needle sharp Ebay bits from China that cost something like $10 for 10 bits. It was programmed in Photo VCarve as a Ball Nose .o31" 30° v-bit. Spindle speed was set at 16,000 rpm, line spacing at 8%, feed/plunge were 50/30 ipm, and cut at a line angle of 135° in a single pass. Light/dark was set inverted. These are settings I got from others on this forum from previous work. Rapid clearance gap was .01". It's been awhile since I did a lithophane, so I forgot one tip was to eliminate the clearance at the end of each line to speed things up a bit. The detail came out good enough that the words on the patch can actually be read! The photo of the finished work doesn't do full justice to the clarity of the image.

P-VCarve estimated the cutting time at 4 hours 42 minutes. Actual time was about 11 hours. I really don't understand why the time estimate is always so far off on these. From previous work I'd estimated double what the program showed; this was almost triple.

[MikeUSNRet]

Fantastic! Excellent detail in this. Really like it.

[JJWMACHINECO]

80% of the way through the piece (630,000 lines of code) the Bosch Colt router burned up! This completed piece was done on a Legacy Arty with a water cooled spindle, the first lithophane I've done on this machine.

I had a problem with my Bosch Colt also. 1/4" way through the finish cut on a Litho. the spindle bearings failed and cut a gouge through the image (scrap). Here is a picture of the spindle I ended up using on it and it will run @ 45,000 RPM day after day, continuous without any problems or failures. It's a USA made 120 VAC Precise Super 65 1/2 HP spindle and I have a separate Precise brand variable speed controller I use on it too. I can run the small bits with higher IPM feeds without breaking them and the spindle has a intake filter to keep the crap out of it which can cause it to run hot. I know, I used a Mr. Gasket small block Chevy thermostat housing for my vacuum shoe, but it actually works pretty good. It's not to large and the domed shape on top directs the cooling air, from the spindle out in a way so it's not restricted and stays running cooler. One thumbscrew removes it for changing the bits.

Precise Super 65 Spindle

By the way, very nice job on your Litho.

Jeff

[Stickman]

I really like that compact dust shoe!!!

[jmaggi3]

I notice PVC times are also different than actual cut time. This is because PVC gives a certain estimated cut time if you were to run at %100 percent speed on Mach3 or what ever you use...cutting corian at %100 just is not going to happen. getting the time differences that your describing, it sounds like your running more like %40-%50 speed. Myself if I go any higher than %60 percent; bits start snapping.