I am getting started trying to make some lithophanes, and I'm running into a few issues. I was hoping someone might be able to point me in the right direction.
I have a few questions.
How do I get rid of the milling marks?
How do I get rid of the little round pockets around the image?
How do I get rid of the "fuzzies" in the corners?
For the attached example, I used candlestone. I measured the thickness with a set of calipers, and the material was .195" thick. I used Vcarve desktop to flatten it down to .15" thick, using a 1/4" endmill.
Then, in PhotoVCarve I used a 1/8" ballnose bit to make a roughing pass, and then a 1/16" tapered ballnose for the finish pass.
The final pass ran at .1 inch max depth, 10% stepover with a distance between lines at .006. My feed rate on the finish pass was 50 ipm, with a plunge rate of 20. The material is only a small piece 2 x 3 1/2", there were 677 lines to mill.
The image had the background removed in Photoshop, and the resulting area was cleared in PhotoVCarve using the "Make Color Transparent" feature.
I am milling on an X carve, with the DeWalt 611 router to power it.
I've been using Vcarve Desktop at home, and have gotten satisfactory results in other wood projects, but this seems to require a little more tweaking.
Any help you can give me would be appreciated. Thanks!
Milling lines and Photo Edges
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- Vectric Wizard
- Posts: 414
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Re: Milling lines and Photo Edges
The smaller the Lithophane, the smaller the bit used. I would have used a.040 or .020 diameter ball nose for the finish cut. And a 8 % step over. A feed rate of 30 imp is sufficient, the machine will rarely get that fast because of the z drive. Minimize Z clearance to a couple thousandths. For a piece that thin, You don't need the rough cut because at the diagonal direction of the cut the bit sees very little material per pass. Norm
- Xxray
- Vectric Wizard
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Re: Milling lines and Photo Edges
No way to get rid of the lines once they are there.
If you use a 1/32 or at least 1/16 tapered ballnose with 8-12% line spacing, lines should not be visible.
If you in fact did that [hard to tell with variance of terms line spacing, stepover ect], then it boils down to you need to use a smaller bit to achieve greater resolution.
As stated, no need for a roughing pass.
If you use a 1/32 or at least 1/16 tapered ballnose with 8-12% line spacing, lines should not be visible.
If you in fact did that [hard to tell with variance of terms line spacing, stepover ect], then it boils down to you need to use a smaller bit to achieve greater resolution.
As stated, no need for a roughing pass.
Doug
- adze_cnc
- Vectric Wizard
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Re: Milling lines and Photo Edges
I expect that what you're seeing are the ghostly remains of this pass. After you milled it to thickness did you do anything to remove those milling marks (e.g. "sanding")?scotta73 wrote:I used Vcarve desktop to flatten it down to .15" thick, using a 1/4" endmill.
Re: Milling lines and Photo Edges
Thanks for the info! I've not had a chance to run another litho as I'm out of material! Looks like I'll grab a smaller ballnose with my next Amazon order. I appreciate the feedback, and post back here when I get a chance to run some more!