Google Earth To CNC Topography

[PenguinManufacturing]

We live in Washington near the San Juan Islands. The islands make for wonderful maps and I wanted to CNC carve the topography of them. I wanted to use Google Earth, but there is an easier way. I found a website that uses Google Earth to create .STL files. Since Aspire imports .STL files, this was an easy and perfect solution. The material is 2 inch thick 20in X 15in Spanish Cedar. Smelled up the whole class while carving.

Here is the link. It took some trial and error to get the detail I wanted. I used a vertical scale of 4 and a water drop of 1mm in this project.
http://jthatch.com/Terrain2STL/

Here is a screenshot of the terrain website

Here is the modeled component after import. The website only let me go portrait, so I imported too big and used the size of material I was using to cut away the unwanted parts of the component.

Then I added a political boundary line for the Canada/USA border and added some modeled letters.

Here are the 2 roughing passes. I used the Vectric 3D raster with .5 ball end (45 minutes) and a Vectric Final pass (although it was a detailed roughing pass) with the .25ball end (50 minutes). I will finish it up tomorrow with a .125 ball end and 10% stepover. At 150 in/minute, it calculated out at 6 hours.

I will try and get a final pass picture tomorrow and then later make a metal frame for it.

[AJF]

There was some discussion on Terrain2STL a few months ago in the forum. Most of us found the resolution of the files that it generated to be poor, plus there are few other issues noted. There are better methods to generate topo maps and if you do a search of the forum you find discussions going back many years, with lots of helpful information.

[adze_cnc]

Most of us found the resolution of the files that it generated to be poor,

In this case the original poster is scaling about 100 kilometres down to 60 or so centimetres. A high resolution is not really of benefit. Now, if he was doing 60 metres to 60 centimetres that's another matter.

[PenguinManufacturing]

Yeah, I didn't go through the forum before I started. I suppose The resolution would be bad in a lot of situations. I think that the website has a certain size in mind to maximize quality and the San Juan map must closely resembled that. Tried the entire USA, but seemed kinda weird. Tried just my yard and too small. So yes, resolution could be a problem, but look at how this turned out and tell me there is a resolution problem. This is turning out perfect and with such little work!

The final .125 ball is running right now. I also went back and added names of islands as a V-Carve to be done afterwards, so this one gets a 4th file.

[PenguinManufacturing]

So We added a V-Carve to finish up after the .125ball end. The 5 Hour .125 finish pass may have given some stress to the machine as it started drifting down on the Z axis about 1/2 through. you can see some of the lines. I believe I dropped about .02-.03 from center of carve to the outside. I will have to keep an eye on this, but we don't do such large carves so often.

[Rcnewcomb]

The modeled lettering is a nice touch

[scottp55]

Excellent Job!
Possible it was the material moving from temperature/humidity changes on a long cut if not in a climate controlled environment.
Also clamping can loosen from hours of vibration on long cuts.
Nice job
scott

[PenguinManufacturing]

Excellent Job!
Possible it was the material moving from temperature/humidity changes on a long cut if not in a climate controlled environment.
Also clamping can loosen from hours of vibration on long cuts.
Nice job
scott

I thought about material moving as a possibility. It is vacuumed down, so, vacuum loss or other issue is a possibility.

[Warped Mind]

Needing help, Once I download a file how do I import it into Aspire? I am having trouble finding the file.

Thanks

[spottsd]

Go to the model tab at the bottom then click the import model icon at the top left
Worked for me just now
cheers
dave

[Warped Mind]

I have tried that , but maybe I did something wrong will try again, thanks

[scottp55]

The one time I tried it, it saved as a .zip file, and after unzipping, there was an .obj file I could import.
VCP8.5 and win10 though.
scott

[Warped Mind]

yes thats what im running into and when I try to locate the file I cannot find it.

[scottp55]

I have mine set to "Always ask" where to save files.
Think you might have to search your computer for terrain-* file, or change your settings and save in a separate folder?