I was trying to enter a carved Octopus into this year's contest, but had some equipment malfunctions along the way. However, with the help of Support, I'm now back carving.
My idea was to take an object from www.thinkiverse.com and use the STL import software and reproduce the object on the Carvewright. The a fore mentioned web site is a great source for 3D printable things for use with 3D printers, laser cutters etc... My choice was the Octopus as I have printed several on my 3D printing machine. As this was to be an experiment also I choose to use plain pine board to see if I got it right. The first attempt I had not fully understood the undercut or curved areas in my slicing. Also as pine chips easily I lost a few tentacles in the process. My second attempt was better where I sliced the lower half of the body of horizontally ( 2 slices for the tentacles), and then sliced the head vertically (7 slices, although one head piece, the center, was not used. I'm not sure why I probably need to recheck the slices and dimensions). I also defaulted the slice to 1/2" as that was the thickness of the board I was going to use. Once again the tentacles didn't survive long. I also lost a few during sanding and gluing. But it was a test in pine and I wanted to get the process right before trying a harder more expensive wood. I have attached several pictures of the result. I used some cherry staining and a few coats of clear varnish as a further experiment on the final glued and sanded test piece. One short cut I did do was that during the pattern lay out, I realized that the head was symmetrical, so I inverted/rotated one side to get the opposite side instead of having a separate pattern.
So things to work on for the next pass:
1) Make stronger ( thicker) tabs to hold the tentacles in place during carving. Might use a Dremel with a cutting blade rather than a Stanley knife next time.
2) Do a better job at gluing so you can't see the joins.
3) Sand the tentacles while still attached to the main board for strength. They came out a bit square so I rounded them more with sandpaper, but lost a few ends as per the picture.
4) Recheck the slicing as I still had a slight mismatch on the tentacle base to top body pieces.
Attached images are:
1) The Octo family. Left is the latest version, Cherry stained Pine; Middle is the plastic printed version from Thingiverse; Right is the first attempt where I did horizontal slicing only. The lower tentacle level was 1/8" an inch thick!!
2) One picture shows the results of gluing and sanding and losing more tentacles.
3) Shots of the carved pieces as they came off the machine.
So any advice on the type of wood or slicing options would be welcome. Once I have what I consider a good carve I'll post the patterns. It might be a while, but it's a fun thing to do!!!
Cheers
Dave
