2.5D Bas Relief engravings/carvings

Hi. I’m new to the V1 Engineering forums. I am in the process of building the Lowrider V4 CNC machine with the Jackpot 3 control board. While I am new to the CNC world I do have experience with 3D printing, Laser engraving/cutting. I have a diode, CO2, and a fiber laser. One thing that I enjoy doing with my fiber laser is making brass coins out of Bas relief images. I was trying to find out if the CNC machine that I am setting up is capable doing these 2.5D images with estlcam. I tried to google it and found that estlcam can do 2.5D engravings but I have not seen any high resolution images like the one that I’ve seen done with Vcarve Pro in this video.

Does anyone have a reference to any videos of estlecam, the Jackpot 3 board, and the lowrider 4 producing high quality images like shown in the video above?

Like this? Or this? I searched “3d carving” and 50 things show up.

You may find most of what you need in the links provided by orob. But, the short answer is its very possible to do the same sort of thing as was done in the video that you linked to with the exact hardware and software that you mentioned.

There are 3 key issues that you will face as you get started. The first is the image with which you start. EstlCAM will use an stl file for engraving. These are often available online or for a small cost. You can also prepare them yourself, of course, but as a beginner, you may wish to use an existing image.

The second issue is the CAM software. EstlCAM is capable of doing everything you need to do this type of project. With proper settings, you can generate a gcode file that will provide resolution in the carving as good as your machine/bit can do.

The third component is the machine itself together with the bit. A properly built LR4 has truly remarkable capabilities. I don’t have exact specs, but it’s certainly capable of positioning the bit with fractional mm accuracy. With that capability, you can use bits with as small as 0.25mm tip to do your finish pass. With about 7-10% overlay, those passes are extremely close together.

Although I happen to have been using an SKR 1.3 board for my work until now, I don’t see any reason that the Jackpot can’t do the same. (In fact, I’m in the middle of converting my Primo to the Jackpot and making it a dedicated carving machine.)

Below are a couple of videos showing the capability of the V1e machines. The first is the LR4 creating a carving of a “woodsman”. The action is a bit difficult to discern, so the final piece appears in the photo below. The piece is about 3” x 6" for scale. The wood was vertical grain fir, which is the reason for the vertical lines. (The few horizontal lines occurred because I had to pause the project several times. )

The second video is a more extended clip showing the other V1e machine doing a 2.5D carving. It includes both the roughing pass and a couple of finishing passes. You might be most interested starting at about 6:45 when the finest details emerge as the final finishing pass is completed using a 0.5mm ball nose bit.

And, finally the Primo cutting the wine and grapes piece that’s in the gallery, here:

Primo at work carving

Hopefully this is enough to get you going.

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I made this with a lowrider 2 (lr4 will be able to do even better). Pier Giorgio Frassati Icon - Things You’ve Made - V1E.com Forum Import a STL into estlcam, choose a 1/4” or 1/8” bit for the initial pass, then use a 1/8” or 1/16” ball nose bit for the finishing pass.

Definitely practice on some rigid foam board first. It mills really well and you can up the speed to 200% to make the testing go faster and see if there were any issues before running at 100% on wood.

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Thank you for the responses on this. I have been scouring these forums as I can when time permits. I will definitely try to review the videos/posts that you all have mentioned here. I think I will also look at Millmage as well as I am very familiar with the Lightburn software that I use for my laser engravers. I was unaware that Lightburn had made a CNC version of their software. definitely something to look into.

The fireman shield I did isn’t really a 2.5D carve. I just roughed out the image and carved the detail by hand. Much quicker if you have the tools.

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