Where can i find a free, cheap or trail software for picture engraving? I am not sure if the is the right term. I am going to buy Mach 3 and I would like a way to take a photo and create a 3d wood carving.

Vectric Photo engrave...www.vectric.com (trial)

thanks...anything cheaper

CAD to Mill DXF Conversion to gcodes for the low price of $25.00.


http://www.cad2gcode.com/id31.html

(I havn't tried this yet, looks good for dxf files)


.

I tried cad2gcode before I bought Vectric. cad2gcode was not as good as Vectric was at converting a photo to the vectors that actually drive your machine. Complex photo detail has much better resolution in Vectric also. I think cad2gcode is certainly worth a try to get your feet wet. Ultimately I think you will like Vectric software better when you see the wood creations actually coming off your machine. :D

Where can i find a free, cheap or trail software for picture engraving? I am not sure if the is the right term. I am going to buy Mach 3 and I would like a way to take a photo and create a 3d wood carving.

Mach has Lazy cam built in.

http://cnc4free.org/

doesn t get any cheaper than this at 20 bucks for the tutorial and all the software is free , the next best thing to produce as high quality pictures would be artcam at however many thousands of bucks that is ,
i feel the freeware still rides higher quality reliefs than artcam

I have the trial version of lazycam but can not figure how to get it to work. I imported a picture and nothing happened. I did not see any helpful info in the help so I thought it did not support it. Does anyone know how to use it?

Lazy Cam does NOT convert photos into a machinable cad file like Vectric does. Belive me Vectric is the way to go if you want to go from a photo to a CNC program fast. Lazy Cam will however create a tool path if you already have a cad format file like a DXF.

I have the trial version of lazycam but can not figure how to get it to work. I imported a picture and nothing happened. I did not see any helpful info in the help so I thought it did not support it. Does anyone know how to use it?

Demo won't do it, you should even buy Lcam Pro.

In Mach click file>lcam
then click image at top of page, when you've processed the image click gcode.

thanks...anything cheaper

Try CamBam...

camBam will generate gcode from a greyscale image without any problem whatsoever.. there's a free beta.. and lots of help and support via the CamBam forum..


hope it helps

Hello David,

PhotoVCarve user and CNC machine builder Stefan Welschoff from CNC-Wood (http://www.cnc-wood.de/)in Germany carved this stunning 3D photograph using PhotoVCarve.

Tony

Thanks for everyone's help.

What program would make it look the most hand carved?

Great looking Photo Carve Tony. :D

Thanks for everyone's help.

What program would make it look the most hand carved?

The answer is none of the above really.. the software(whichever it is) will simply interpret the content of the image.. "cut in the style of" is not really in photo-carving software featuresets..

however, if you want a hand-carved look you could try some edits to the image before you process it... distress it a bit.. or texturise it.. using a hand-carved image as the basis for the texturing...

hope this helps

Danny

Look for Profiler6 I've had very good results with it.
Most of the posts of picture I've done, are with profiler.
Jimini

hi

nice job

you use photocarve and mach3 ?

This interests me, as well. I just posted a similar topic...

can vetric do engraving on 3-d surfaces, too? Like on a curved surface?

This interests me, as well. I just posted a similar topic...

can vetric do engraving on 3-d surfaces, too? Like on a curved surface?


Unfortunately no Andy, Mastercam however does that very well.

gmax will create some really cool stuff for engraving , you can wrap a jpeg around a ball or what ever you want ,
http://www.rainnea.com/cnc.htm this software will run within gmax and create code for 3-5 axis , its a pretty cool piece of software , ive played with it some but haven t had a chance to put the code to the machine to see how it performs ,but i have used freemill with gmax as a modeler and was appreciative of the detail that i cut out on my machine , it was outright wicked
one thing i will say is gmax is an extremely powerfull software once a guy gets the hang of it

plus its free , which keeps 500 - 1000 bucks in my pocket

i don't engrave for weak at heart :bat:

Unfortunately no Andy..........

Hi there,

As pointed out by dertsap, the most cost-effective means to engrave on a curved surface is the gmax/CNC_Toolkit combination.

The fastest and most efficient way to approach this task is to import 3 axis gCode, as generated by a wide range of software (FREEMill / CamBam / Profiler) and remap it to conform to a curved or shaped surface of pretty much any form. It will then generate gcode to cut the path, re-mapped to suit the surface in question.

CNC_Toolkit is FREE and unrestricted for personal use. A full commercial license costs only £100 GBP. gmax is a FREE version of 3D Studio by Autodesk / Discreet. AFAIK this is considerably less than the cost of ANY other software capable of performing this task.

Further information and some excellent examples can be found at the link posted in the previous reply. There is also a FREE and detailed manual for CNC_Toolkit available at the website in my sig.. on the tutorials page..

hope this helps

Danny

...

hope this helps

Danny

Wow, thanks Dan! That helps quite a bit. I'm not sure I fully grasped everything you told me, but it sounds like that's the kind of software combo I need to get me up and running for my purposes.

I thought you meant 3D engraving of letters on any 3D surface like this:

I thought you meant 3D engraving of letters on any 3D surface like this:

Kind of. I'm making gun grips/stocks and I want the ability to cutomize with engraved graphics (images) and textures like checkering.

From looking at that cambam website, it looks like I can do that. It looks like I would need to "heightmap" the image I wanted engraved onto the surface and then wrap that heightmap around the curved section of the object I wanted to engrave, right?

eta: Like they show here:
http://www.brusselsprout.org/CAMBAM/screenshots/HeightmapCylinderWrap.png

Andy,

We'll see what you can come up with. If you run into trouble I would be happy to program it for you. :D

Kind of. I'm making gun grips/stocks and I want the ability to cutomize with engraved graphics (images) and textures like checkering.

From looking at that cambam website, it looks like I can do that. It looks like I would need to "heightmap" the image I wanted engraved onto the surface and then wrap that heightmap around the curved section of the object I wanted to engrave, right?

eta: Like they show here:



Hi there,

glad you found it helpful...

To do the kind of job you want to do would be relatively simple using CamBam and gmax / CNC_Toolkit...

you are right in that you would use CamBam to generate the heightmap from the image...The FREE beta version of CamBam is perfectly capable of the height-mapping you need. The example from the CamBam site uses a purpose built cylindrical mapping plugin... but for your purposes a flat path would be the best option as for a gunstock I would think you wouldn't need so much curvature

you would import the CamBam gcode into gmax using CNC_Toolkit to get the code in...

After that all you need is a model of the surface that you want the path to conform to... gmax will allow you to bend, warp, skew or otherwise distort the overall shape of the path to match the surface of the gunstock.. without destroying the height mapping... CamBam applies tooling compensation so this is already embedded into the imported path.

You can see the adjustment to the cutting path/ vector in realtime as you modify it. Should you need to do this with text then gmax will generate the text... it processes truetype fonts directly to vectors so bending / conforming text is equally easy to do.

I've attached an image to show how it works... this is a pretty severe bend.. it was to suit a round table leg for 4 axis cutting. It still maintains the form of the flat path shown in the lower part of the image... CNC_Toolkit will process the path and embed the distortion into the output gcode... you can code for 3,4,5 or even 6 axes depending on the cutting machine configuration.

there is a bit of a learning curve.. but if you take a task based approach it shouldn't take too long for you to get the hang of it.. and there's a lot of support available via the CNC_Toolkit user group on yahoo..

again, hope this helps..

Danny