Here are three examples of what can be done with Photo Vcarve. I had no idea this was possible until a few weeks ago. At least I have not seen any examples here. The process is amazingly simple, you will need a decent paint program to make it happen. I use Corel X3. Used to be I thought the Paint part of the program was, well, neat but pretty worthless except for making pictures.

A couple of weeks ago I woke up thinking "I wonder, if I messed with Paint and Photo Vcarve what will happen?" So, after a bit of experimenting this is what I found out, it is practically limitless!

Essentially what I do is paste the clipart onto a white background, then invert the whole image in the paint program. I then copy that onto the clipboard or into a new window. The window is safer. Then I use the Gaussian blur tool to make the edges blurry.

After that, I paste the copied image right on top of the blurred one. I then create a mask from that image that encircles all the parts of the image. Since the mask is not attached to the bitmap, I can then delete the copy image, and my blurred image reappears with the mask on top of it. It is a simple matter to just invert the mask so that I can "paint" away the blurry edges outside of the mask. Presto, save the image and load it into Photo VCarve.

I don't know about most of you guys, but when I bought VCarve, I got the package deal, and figured I might someday do one of those picture engravings. It was not my main reason for buying VCarve.

In PVC, you need to set the stepover so that it is like .010 or some other setting that gives you the finish you want vs the ball end mill you are using. You can also set your depth to what you need. I am finding I like about .312 the best. I cut full depth, otherwise some of these files would run for days. To keep from snapping the tool off on the first pass which is a full cut at full diameter, I edit the feedrate for that first cutting pass. Be careful, it pays to know your CNC code when doing this.

There is a LOT more you can do with paint for these files, you can experiment with the Airbrush tools, etc. It takes a bit of playing around at first, but the results speak for themselves.

Once again, Vectric has gone above and beyond! This is one helluva tool!

PS, I cut the Vineyard sign today, it is cut .312 deep, with a 1/8 ball end mill, from white oak. Which seems like a lot, but then, if I were to carve it by hand, it would not look as good. But if I want it to look 'hand carved', I can always get out my tools and give it a personal touch. The small fleur de lis looking block is 4 inches square and takes about 20 minutes.

If you are going to try this, and do not have Corel, I cannot help you very much, sorry. I am thinking that most of the paint programs should be able to do this.

Nice work. I will have to try that.

Wow that is great idea. Any chance we can see the one you cut?

Very cool,....

I'd be curious to see the clipart you loaded up into PhotoVcarve to achieve this result.
I played with a couple this morning, but I wasn't able to achieve the smoothness you seem to have. I to would be helpful to see the "gray scale" image you used.

Thanks,
Tim

Hey Tim,

This should help you out a bit. The interesting thing about this technique is all the different effects that can be applied. For instance, you will notice that this one blends smoothly from the light areas to the black. If you pop a mask on it, and sharpen that edge, then the carving "stands out" a bit from the background, great for shadows (carving is actually all about creating shadows).

I keep experimenting, the one you see here is the result of a "burn" tool and some degaussian blurring. There are a lot of variables doing this, just changing the carving depth in PVC alters the appearance.

Another place to see how things looks is the Vector Art website, they have some images for downloading that show what the shading looks like.

Hope this helps, I am wondering what some of you other folks are going to come up with using PVC!

Another thought I had.....

The relief cut on some of these is very long. You could....with the use of VCarve and PhotoVCarve cut that down dramatically.

You could use the same clipart image to set up vectors in vcarve. And run a vcarve path on it. This would serve as a "rough cut". Then use the mask color option in PhotoVCarve and have it only cut the Features of the clipart....not all of it. Import that Photovcarve into VCarve and your relief cut time is reduced substantially.

It reduced the cut time below from 6 hours to 45 minutes.

I included the vcarve file I used.

Does that make any sense?

It could look something like this;

Shoot, somehow the image did not send! Here ya go.

Great idea Tim! Since I am NOT a PVC master, I had no idea what that make color transparent check box did.

Brilliant!

Here is my rendition of your suggestion:

The cool part is that you don't even need to use the exact shapes from your clipart. You can simply put a shape or box around it. That way the edges would still be fairly smooth.

By the way did you estimate the time savings on the rendition you posted above?

Tim

Here is my attempt with a deer clipart and the clipart I used.

Hi,

Could someone, please, explain me in detail this process? I think due to the language barrier I am not able to undersatnd in full the process. Thank you for time, efort and suport.

Zoltan

TReischl, can probably explain it better, but this is basically what you do.

Start with a piece of black and white clipart like this:

Copy it to a new photo paint window using the copy function. This will give you 2 images that are the same.

Then using the Guassian blur function in Corel Photo paint blur the black and white together like this:


To get to the level you see above do this:

1. Run the blur effect. (At about....say 20 pixels)
2. Overlay the second copy you made.
3. Mask off the black color and delete the second copy leaving the blurred image and the mask.
4. Use your paint or fill tool to sharpen the edges back up to the mask you created.
5. Remove the mask.
6. Run the blurr again at a smaller number to blend the edges slightly. (At about 6 pixels)

Then load the image into PhotoVcarve and grayscale machine it using a ball nose cutter. Check out this thread for instructions on how to set up the grayscale machining.

Thank you TReischl for coming up with this.

Hope this helps,
Tim

I think you have nailed the process exactly Tim, looks great to me!

Thank you very much.

Zoltan

Very cool! I'm gonna try this this weekend and will post my results here.


Jason