I just found Maslow and I’m curious if the Z axis can handle complex 3 dimensional carvings.
I’ve searched all through the gallery and garden and here in the forums but haven’t managed to find an example of anyone taking advantage of a variable z axis motor to make something 3 dimensional. Everything I’ve seen thus far is flat.
For example, if I wanted to carve a shallow relief - like a border of flowers and leaves. Can I give them depth or would have to settle for only cutting out the flat shapes and carving out any depth details by hand?
Hopefully that made sense, if not here is a website with some examples.
Is it possible? Yes is it the way you’re thinking no sorry to say. It is possible to get close to what your talking about by stepping down and over, over and over again you will get something very very close. Unfortunately it won’t be exactly what your talking about the z axis motor is to slow now there are some people who are using different z axis motors to go faster. The problem then becomes I believe that the board can only use two motors at any one time. I’m not sure if there is a fix to this but I would love to here if I’m wrong.
I gave a similar answer to yours in another current thread: Is this possible
I was happy to find out that I was wrong. @John_Wagenman must have heard the same thing I just did. Oh, & John… I think it is so new of a development that no one has yet exhibited it. I hope I’m proved wrong about that soon as well!
One of the challenges will be that the sled that holds the router rests on the surface it is cutting (it’s not supported by a gantry). Therefore, as you cut away material and start creating a 3D surface, you can end up with an uneven surface that may cause the sled/router to tilt, resulting in cutting errors. If you keep the carving area small and can put scrap wood above and below (or to the left and to the right) of the piece being cut so that the sled is always resting on them, then that problem can be overcome.
Adding a bit of hand work with chiselling and sanding, ‘Z-tabs’ would work I guess. ‘cylindrical seld-riding-towers’ that are left standing and removed by hand later.
