Carving with sketchup?
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Golden Greetings
I have bought a small cnc wood carving machine and am exploring the potential to use my 3d sketchup designs and converting them to ptn or mpc files that my software called designer will be able to use. The depth of the carve is based on grayscale shading in the carvewright software. The deeper the cut is indexed by darker shades. Here is an example of my first carving on cedar.
Has anyone used sketchup designs that has been converted to cnc software formats?
Thanks
alpmeadow
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Hi Irv, and welcome to the forum.
I know that SU files can be exported as dwg and dxf files, if that's any help. Most CNC machines that I know work with dxf files. I would suggest checking the 'Help' files on your machines software to see if it is possible to convert dwg or dxf files to the kind of files the machine uses.
You might also post this question on the 'Hardware, Software&Gadgets' sub-form at the Corner Bar on the Board index. Thats where the computer literate SketcUpers hang out
.Anyway, good to have you with us.
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Hi Gidon
I have submitted previous posts concerning woodworking prior to woodworking subforum getting up and running. (adirondack chair)see link at http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=8084.
Thanks for the advice. I have exported SU in dxf mode however the only way to import these files is to convert to png first and then import it into my cnc program so it is not a true vector translation. There are some ruby developments happening but I will have to research it further, and have a go at the
@alpmeadow said:'Hardware, Software&Gadgets' sub-form
Cheers
alpmeadow -
Hi, I'm new to the forum and was curious if there are additional hints/posts about 3D carving in wood? I am just starting with SU, and heard something about a plugin to save DXF or STL from the free version. Ultimately these would be input to something like EMC2 or Mach3 for CNC carving on a small machine.
Any information is appreciated.
Thanks!
Paul -
what software are you using to carve?
when i carve, i use vectors and vgroove carving in artcam.
id like to know what software you use to get that result from a grey scale image! impressed!
i recently carved a newel cap from a sketchup model with an 18mm bullnose bit, its on here in the gallery.
thanks,
tom.
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Golden Greetings Mut and DMA
Its been awhile, my 3D wood carving continues in learning phase and SU does help in converting 3D in my cnc software called designer. However I don't have its full version yet. The best I can do for now is take my SU model and using styles and fog to blacken the background and improve its depth appearance. SU models are saved as png from which I import into designer. It is then adjusted to carving face and depth. The final design model is then sent to the cnc machine with various router bit selection for final carving. Here are some samples of my work.
I am mostly carving wood working projects, recreation, natural scenes and wildlife signs and have much more development work to do.
Good luck with your projects.
Cheers
alpmeadow
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