I’m looking to do wall art mainly, but in much larger pieces than a typical horizontal cnc router without getting into the 5k+ range… Do you think Maslow can design this?
Greyscaled of course, and depth from wolf closest to furthest mountain… size at around 4’x4’
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When you say “Do you think Maslow can design this?” do you mean cut or design?
The Maslow can’t design anything, it can only cut using the NC code you provide it with.
As to whether the Maslow can cut such a picture, yes, for sure, no problems personally.
Now, what software you would use to generate the NC code, I don’t know. I’ve never tried such a project.
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Thank you for the quick reply… Sorry I guess my question was kinda sloppy.
What I meant was would it be able to cut it with decent detail? I am very interested in the Maslow system for its size, good speed, and fair accuracy… just have yet to find any videos or pictures of detailed artwork.
Once again, Thanks for the feedback!
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The sled always needs enough material to ride on, not to tip and fall in pervious cuts. Out of on piece, I would say, no, perhaps if you divide the depths in 7 or 8 layers and cut each separate out of thin material.
More info: Is this possible
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Ok… Thank you for the feedback, giving me a better idea of what I can do now.
Before you abandon the idea, I think that it would depend on how much you intend to cut out. There are definitely methods of rendering images, like v-carving, that would leave plenty of surface for the sled to ride on. Another method is cone shaped depressions of differing depth
https://www.instructables.com/id/Engraving-an-Image-With-a-CNC-Router/
As for the detail, that would depend on how dialed in you can get your machine.
Here’s a good posting of some detailed artwork:
and that with a stock Maslow without many of the later improvements considered essential now
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Thanks for the feedback… So is it possible to make the sled larger to fit over images or does changing the dimensions alter the calibration and suffers in quality?
You don’t need a bigger sled, you just need to put “skirts” around your material just slightly thinner than your stock on your frame (so the sled does not catch on an edge). stock sled means skirts about 8-9 inches wide. Just the top and bottom are needed unless you are trying for zero waste on the sides. I would like to know what cam program you are going to use cause this would be a great looking project.
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If you want to look into 2.5D carving, look into hight-maps also called depth-maps and how to create them.
The way it works is that from white to black the gray-scales are translated to depth of the cutter in the material, where as standard is white = Z0 and black is max depth you want to go.
While it’s a bit of work but fairly easy to create a height-map from a 3D model, to create one from an image is not that straight forward, because of the lighting. In your example you would have to create 4 different height-maps (for example sky = depth z-10mm to Z-8mm, far mountain = z-8 to z-6mm, close mountain = z-6 to z-4mm and wolf/ground z-4 to z0)
The requirement that it can’t be much bigger then your sled remains, unless there is enough white (z=0) for the sled to ride on.
Edit: http://3dp.rocks/lithophane/ is one way from image to .stl.
This is how your picture looks there:
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Awesome… Thanks for the feedback! I plan to useinkscape to make the code.
Thats Awesome! Thanks for the feedback, veey helpful.
When you say that, do you mean that you want to have the wolf stand physically forward of the rest of the carving? If so, then you do need to heed @Gero’s warning that the sled will tilt. Making the sled larger so that it spans over the whole image is an option, but at 4x4 feet, the sled would become prohibitively large.
If you are just looking to carve the image so it looks nice, then you should have no problems. The various v-carved imaging techniques posted above should help.
If you want it to be more like a shallow diorama, then you will likely need to get creative. With a carving that is mainly high surface relief, keeping the sled flat will be a definite concern, and in that case, a gantry type setup would be better. That being said, I know that there has been some exploration of modifying the Maslow to maintain a consistent sled flatness despite carved areas. Some searching of the forums should turn it up.
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This makes me giggle a little 
. Projects like this put the SLOW in MaSLOW. No matter what… It will be worth it in the end and I’m sure you will be able to make it happen!
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