Replies

1. 
   RickL | Dec 28, 2006 05:09pm | #1

   http://www.carvewright.com is the manufacturer. I believe someone on sawmillcreek.org has one. It's been out for a year or so perhaps.

1. 
   Rich14 | Dec 28, 2006 05:46pm | #2

   Fascinating. Nothing I would have use for, but fascinating. Rich

2. 
   Dave45 | Dec 28, 2006 07:01pm | #4

   Rick -

   Yeah, that looks pretty much like the Carftsman I saw as I was chomping on the turkey sandwich.

   I'm going to keep an eye on this thing.  I can see some potential uses in my woodworking business.  One would be making flutes.  I can do pretty well with my router and a cove bit in a jig, but I always get a little burn at the ends of the flutes.  It would also be fun to make carved corner blocks for window and door casings.

2. 
   Napie | Dec 28, 2006 06:28pm | #3

   Can virtual woodworking be far behind?  Just take the blue pill…..

1. 
   HWG | Dec 28, 2006 11:21pm | #7

   Virtual Woodworking -- I love it!  Will certainly be easier on my thumbs...er, well, thumb.Woody

3. 
   mudman | Dec 28, 2006 08:35pm | #5

   I saw it  at a show reciently. The inventors are NASA engineers in Houston. The machine sold by Sears is the same. They have been selling pretty good. I have a fair amount of CNC, CAD, CAM experience and we talked for a while in detail about the details. It is a good machine. Perfect for signs. The only limit in length is the weight the feed  rollers can pull through.

   Right now the machine can NOT accept any kind of CNC file from an outside sourse. So designs in Solid Works, Inventor, Sketch Up and the like cannot be imported. The CAM program looks at a scaned grey scale image and assigns heigth values to different shades. So the only way to import a design is to scan it as a JPEG and take it into their program. The developer basicly told me that they don't really intend to make it interface with CAD/CAM files because it is not designed to make percesion parts for joinery. So if they added that as a feature users would likely be dissapointed in the results. I think that decesion is very smart of them.

   This thing is very well suited for carving aplicay details and engraving. In some ways it is better than the $90,000 machines that I have used. You can very easily take a sketched drawing or picture and turn it into a carving with no CNC knowlage. This machine competes against lazer engravers and small Shop Bots.

   Pardon my spelling,

   Mike

   Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.

1. 
   Dave45 | Dec 28, 2006 09:34pm | #6

   Thanks for the input.  I'm something of a tool junkie and this stuff fascinates me.

   Earlier this morning, I stopped by my finish guy's shop and talked to the cabinet guy who shares the space with him.  He does some pretty high-end cabinetry and thought that this gadget would be worthwhile for some added "wow" to some of his work.

   Too bad it won't take outside files.  I had visions of drawing stuff in TurboCad and "carving" it with that gizmo. - lol

2. 
   mathew | Dec 29, 2006 03:09am | #8

   Just as an aside, you won't want to scan your images as JPEGs, that's a lossy compression scheme that could cause the machine to misread what it's supposed to do. Use BMP or Targa, those will give you accurate reproductions (between the scanned image, and the original).Mat

1. 
   mudman | Dec 29, 2006 08:03pm | #9

   What you say makes sense. The developer told me that the software will accept about any image. It then converts it into a propriatary 2D with heigth format. It is this format that you work with on the screen. You can change the relief and other details and see the results in a 3D enviroment. There is also a 3D probe that will read a real surface and copy it.Pardon my spelling,

   Mike

   Make sure that your next project is beyond your skill and requires tools you don't have. You won't regret it.

1. 
   JFinnell | Dec 30, 2006 09:24pm | #10

   From the description you got from the developer it sounds as like this tool works in a manner similar to a stereolithography machine.  It carves a 3D form by tracing a series of 2D images that represent slices of the 3D solid.  If that is true, it should be possible to use a solid modeling tool such as Solidworks to generate your own slice(s) from it.  It might be slow going, but it would be worth a try.  Did they mention what resolution was?

   John