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Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Combined CNC Engraving Technologies. Spindle + Laser

« on: February 27, 2014, 09:35:50 AM »

We were able to 3D spindle engrave a height map image in wood and then laser engrave a photo with shades onto it afterwards with the same machine. It took two different photos and Picengrave Pro 4 + Laser to generate the two different Gcode files. Those two files axis movements were then combined into one file so the laser's focal point would follow the spindle engravings profile up and down to stay in focus on the surface of the wood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUIrS3Ot1I4

Jeff

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Show"N"Tell ( What you have made with your CNC machine.) / Mirror Lasering With Shades

« on: January 29, 2013, 07:09:04 AM »

Hi everyone,

I laser engraved on the back of a mirror by varying the laser diodes power using an US Digital absolute analog shaft encoder timing belted to my Z axis stepper motor. The 0-5V from the encoder is fed into analog modulated laser diode driver to vary the laser's intensity. This process does not require any special laser engraving software, so a rotary engraving image program will work with my process, but I prefer PicEngrave Pro 4 to generate the inverted Lithophane G-code.

The image is not dithered B&W like a normal laser engraving process, but brought into PEP4 as the original after doing some simple editing like gamma adjustment and sharpening. The Z axis depth of cut code slightly rotates the encoder which powers the laser diode up and down based on shading of the image.

The first picture is the back of the mirror after the shade engraving process which looks like a photo negative. When lighted from the back, it looks like the original photo as shown in the second picture. The third picture is showing it viewed from the front without any back lighting.

I have been using this greyscale laser engraving process to create shades for quite some time now on wood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xGYtpW00I8

Thanks to forum member Picengraver showing us his laser engraved mirrors in the thread he started, has opened up a new way for me to create art with his software. Thanks John!

Jeff