So I've been interested in 3D carving for a while, but had other little projects to take care of first. In fact, today before I started I had to redo my wiring to my spindle as my crimp connections sucked. Once that was over, I took the last bit of 12" shelving pine and decided to find something to carve. I found a $3 model on Etsy I liked, adjusted the size and went at it.
First pass was 45 minutes with a 1/4" endmill, roughing out the main area. I left .05" clearance during this pass, then started the long pass with a 1.5mm ball nose endmill, with a 15% stepover. Each pass only moved .24 mm on the Y axis. Here's a 20 second video showing you this process
So 4 hours later, you end up with this:
Pine is soft and subject to tear out. I'm going to cut this out of the blank and do a bit of sanding, but overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Happy enough I wouldn't mind cutting it again in some thicker oak or maple. I'm sure I lost some of the detail when I squeezed the z-axis down to fit into a 3/4" piece of wood.
Anyways, my wife and kids all thought it was cool so I thought I'd share.
First pass was 45 minutes with a 1/4" endmill, roughing out the main area. I left .05" clearance during this pass, then started the long pass with a 1.5mm ball nose endmill, with a 15% stepover. Each pass only moved .24 mm on the Y axis. Here's a 20 second video showing you this process
So 4 hours later, you end up with this:
Pine is soft and subject to tear out. I'm going to cut this out of the blank and do a bit of sanding, but overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Happy enough I wouldn't mind cutting it again in some thicker oak or maple. I'm sure I lost some of the detail when I squeezed the z-axis down to fit into a 3/4" piece of wood.
Anyways, my wife and kids all thought it was cool so I thought I'd share.