I’m brand new to CNC, and there’s plenty of tools to take a 3d image and turn it into say, 10 layered slices that you can cut on a CNC and stack to make a 3d image. But what about the opposite?
I have a bunch of layered vector images, but instead of cutting them out of individual layers and stacking them, I’d like to somehow convert them to a single 3d layered object and cut them all out at once(I want to keep the ‘layered step’ look). I believe I could just stick a thick piece of wood in and one by one have it cut each layer image and just increase the depth of the cuts by a few mm each layer. But on the top layer it’d spend a lot of time pocketing and shaving off a few mms and leave just the uncut part exposed, then I assume the next layer would cut down a lot of that material anyways, so i just wasted time. If it was one 3d object, I feel like it’d just cut each part once. Am I wrong here? I’ll be planning on doing a whole lot of projects like this, so efficiency is key! Thank you for all the help
If you composited all the images into a stacks set of composite paths with the lowest set to 100% fill, and the top to 10% fill you should be able to save those as a pixel image and cut them as a texture (depth map) in the Pro mode of Carbide Create.
Or, do that and Boolean subtract each from the layers on top — then you’d just need to assign the correct toolpaths with appropriate starting and ending depths.
Interesting. I actually have them all in a single file as separate layers already, all perfectly aligned. Is Carbide Create Pro a paid thing? Can I do this in Fusion? Also could I set different depths to each layer?
Carbide Create Pro will be a paid thing but currently has a free license:
No idea about Fusion.
Yes, you can set different start depths for each toolpath in Carbide Create — but there needs to be no overlapping and the SVG format doesn’t support layers, so the layer information will be lost on import into Carbide Create.
Ahh, that makes sense. When I import the SVG all the layers are all combined into one and I can see every single path and it’s way too much to sift through. So either I need to find a way to take these 2d images and convert them into a 3d object, or I need a filetype that supports layers
In addition to what has been said, I figured I would reference this example project of mine, where I started from a series of vectors in a 2D plane in Fusion, and extruded each one manually to different heights, to end up with a single 3D shape with a layered look: the same approach could apply to your usecase, should you choose to import your SVG in a Fusion sketch.