Ok so here is the rest of my story…
Below are 2 sketchup illustrations of how I made my setup. I made a jig to wedge the log tight, by using some pine, steel rods, a chain and 2 straps top and bottom. The chain prevents the jig to open up all the way as I’m tightening the straps…thus pulling the log nice and snug into the wedge and securing it.
The log’s weight is not held in place by the jig, its supported underneath by the table frame and some spacers. The table has castors so I can move the table around if needed.
Now for some live shots:
The table was made for another cnc I was busy building from scratch, but as you can see the Onefinity 50X fits nicely. The table frame is made from square and rectangular tubing. The frame is just painted with random cans of spray paint I had laying around (to use them before they expire)
This is just a view from the top before surfacing it.
Here is a short video of the surfacing in action. Excuse the mess on the floor, its an extremely small room and theres no more space anywhere else.
I had to use online tools to shorten the video to 8mb otherwise I couldn’t upload.
As you can see, the surfacing is following the shape of the log, that is because I took a photo from the top, digitized it in Vectric Aspire, and scaled it to the size of the actual log. This way I could focus on only the size and shape of the log for whatever I wanted to do.
Yeah I know my cabling is a mess, I’m in the process to make my own drag chain with my laser cutter…already made smaller ones for a robot chess machine, so I know my drag chain design would work.
After the surfacing, I took a silhouette picture of a frog. Used the software’s built in function to vectorize it, rotate and scaled it to fit the log’s shape. Then made a 3D model of the vector. I first made a roughing toolpath with a 6mm end mill bit.
Here I was already so excited of what the Onefintity can do, I stood there the whole time staring at the carving as the frog’s ‘rough’ shape started to emerge.
I then went ahead and made a smoothing toolpath with a 3mm end mill bit. Which later I saw I could have refined a bit. But for now this was freagin awesome!
I was very happy with my first cut, and even something totally different than what I’m used to seeing on the internet.
As you can see, the edges of the frog could be smoother. This was because of my input picture was a bit pixelated.
After I was done, I flipped it around and leveled the underside the same way.
Now onto my next log project…