New version 2.005 online

[ArtF]

Hi All:

  This version is a maintenance version with a few small fixes. It also includes a
celtic knot module.  http://youtu.be/g9f5hTHvKh8

    Eventually, an engraving module will allow for machining these, but my primary reason
in writing it was for laser scan engraving.

Thx
Art

[John T]

Hi Art,
The knot function is amazing - I do "engraving" with a ball nose cutter on my CNC will this be the same code that you would use with a Laser?  I can see that I would set the zero at some depth into the wood I'm engraving and let the ball nose do the 2.5 D carving.  Is that where you are headed?

John

[ArtF]

Hi John:

  Glad to see you like it. :)

  For a laser, you simply scan many times using the grayscale image as a scan power
setting. Blacker the pixel, the more power to apply. For STL's of course they can simply
print it. In future Ill add an "engraving waterline" module which will engrave using small
ball mills or V-point milling tools. The resolution you get of course will depend entirely
on how tiny a tool you can push through that material and how long you wish to take to
cut one. If their popular Ill add some more features to them perhaps,  but I wrote them
because I wanted to see how hard they would be to make, and because Ive long been a
fan of them as decorative artwork on wood. I cut my first knot into wood about 10 years
back and was always impressed with them.

Art

[bosr]

I would love to see engraving added, especially with 4th axis wrapping along a taper or user defined geometry.

[ArtF]

Hi :

>>I would love to see engraving added, especiall y with 4th axis wrapping along a taper or user defined geometry.

  That is the end game plan.

Art

[Mooselake]

Give Scorch's dmap2gcode a try; it's a Window's port with enhancements of the LinuxCNC image-to-gcode.  I don't know if it'll read the grayscale bmp files directly, but you can convert them to jpg files first.  It'll take the grayscale image and convert it to engraving gcode.  Not as good as the pending GT version, but something to fill the void.

Scorch's version is on my todo list, but I've done a fair number of lithophanes with the linux program it's based on.  I have used Scorch's F-Engrave.

Kirk

[ArtF]

Forum is back up. Sorry for the downtime, apparently something broke.
Should be OK now.

Art