This is the point in the semester where I am dying. This week, we were tasked to use the Carvey to carve a noun. Because I’ve already used the carvey to carve Texas, I decided to challenge myself to stipple something cool (which was probably a mistake because I’m here at 10:30 pm on a Saturday night).
the image i wanted to use
For this, I decided to cut my dog out. First, I imported my file into StippleGen2. The original photo I imported and decided to cut had a background and no editing. I soon realized that the background caused a lot of clutter so I went to photoshop and edited my image much like I would for laser etching a photo. I sharpened the image, increased the contrast, made sure there weren’t areas that were too dark or too light, and made the image black and white. From there, I reimported the image back into StippleGen2 and it looked a lot better and more like a dog without using like 5000 stipples.
Original stipple w/ background and no picture editing
v2 with editing
My first cut was on the carvey was with the super cluttered photo on the cedar because I thought the cedar was really cool, but I didn’t sand it and it broke a 1/32 in bit. My second cut was, again, on the carvey with the improved image on birch plywood. I was super nervous the bit would break again, but it didn’t and the image turned out pretty good.
it kind of looks like a dog!
I decided to cut my second one on Saturday night because no one would be in the OEDK right? WRONG. Scout and Arturo were both here to cut on the carvey so I decided to use the x-carve instead (lab assistant advantages). I first tried to cut on the cedar after sanding it down so it’ll be smooth, but cedar and I really weren’t meant to be. The cedar wasn’t level so some of the stipples didn’t cut. I decided to move back to birch ply after that and it turned out (mostly) fine. The wood wasn’t too great and I think the x-carve was a little more aggressive, resulting in some of the dots blending together into a big hole.
the x carve had bigger holes
For post processing, I sanded down the top so it’ll be super smooth and then used the router to round the edges of the wood (tb to the first assignment). The router split my wood a little which is unfortunate but some sanding helped make it not so obvious. I finished my post processing with some tung oil.
rounded corners!
after adding tung oil
From this assignment, I learned that 1/32th bit is not ideal to cut with and that the x-carve and carvey take way longer than you would think. They are really good for non complex object, but once you add some complexity, things get a little messy and the machines don’t work the way you want them to.
