New acrylic carvings.

[Keith Hodges]

Just a few of the many acrylic carvings I've been doing lately. I love the fact that these don't require any explanation like the Lithophanes do. Since the drawings are line art, the carving time is much less also. One thing I noticed was, creating and tracing to create vectors is sometimes a real chore. I've not been all that successful on all pictures. With all the colors and fill around a picture. I stumbled upon a very easy process to come up with only the lines around the main portions of the picture. I found an app on my iPhone, called pencil illusion, which is a free download. You take a picture of something, comes out like a pencil drawing, and, with maybe only a little touch up, it's ready for the tracing tool in vcarve pro, to create the tool path to carve the picture. The Harly Davidson carving came from the Internet, snapped a picture, saved to file, brought it into vcarve, and after sizing, created the tool path, and ready for carving in about 5 minutes. Hopefully I've explained it well enough, at least I get the job done to my liking. Keith

[Keith Hodges]

Couple more

[Keith Hodges]

Some more

[Keith Hodges]

And some more.

[tonydude]

Keith,

They came out really nice. I want to do some next week. What bits did you use and at what feed rate and rpm on your router? Is it cast acrylic? What thickness and where did you buy the acrylic?

Thanks,

Tony

[Keith Hodges]

Hi Tony. The acrylic, I believe would be cast, at any rate, not the kind you by at Home Depot, Lowes, etc. I get it from estreetplastics.com. Fairly well priced. About 3 days shipping time. I buy the 1/2 inch thick material. I originally bought 1 inch, which is pretty cool, but I don't see any reason to go that thick anymore. I buy in 4 foot lenghts, then cut down to size with my bandsaw. Less expensive in the larger sheets. Very easy to cut, and to sand the edges to get a nice reflective edge around it. I leave my router speed on its highest setting, doesn't seem to effect melting or the cut. I do however, slow my cnc down to about 50% with the slider on the control panel, just to stop any chatter in the cuts. I'll do like you did, start a new post with instructions for carving bitmap outline images, to carve the acrylic. The carving must be line art. I don't think you can carve photos like lithophanes. At least I haven't tried, but don't think you'll get good results. I use my 90 degree v bit that came with my shark. Works really well. Keith

[Eagle55]

Great job. The color LEDs have an awesome effect on the project.

Roger

[CountryWoodCrafts]

Wow . . .great work . . .

[Keith Hodges]

Roger. Yes they do. Whats really cool, use a remote and let it change through all the colors, or flash at random. These are the LED's and remote we discussed earlier from Hong Kong. Keith

[Iceman567]

Cool stuff. I'll have to look and see if they have a similar Android app for my Razr.
Looks and sounds easy enough to do and nice results.