New acrylic carvings.

[basecircle]

Keith great job on the acrylic carveings.Every piece is outstanding.And thanks for the supplyer (estreetplastics.com)The prices are great the 1/2x9x48 is a great way to cut any size needed for my carvings.As for cleaning the edges have you ever done edge flameing with a propane torch?It works great.I like your work keep cranking them out.Basecircle

[Keith Hodges]

Thanks for the compliments basecircle. I did try the edge flaming. It was pretty cool, but liked the frosted edge look better with sanding. But hey, they all look good. And wouldn't the world be a boring place if we did everything just alike?

[wolffie]

How do you get the bi-colour effect in the Budweiser and Linda pieces?
Do you use coloured acrylic?
I have a nice big piece of red.
Cheers
Wolffie

[River Side Creations]

Just a few of the many acrylic carvings I've been doing lately. I love the fact that these don't require any explanation like the Lithophanes do. Since the drawings are line art, the carving time is much less also. One thing I noticed was, creating and tracing to create vectors is sometimes a real chore. I've not been all that successful on all pictures. With all the colors and fill around a picture. I stumbled upon a very easy process to come up with only the lines around the main portions of the picture. I found an app on my iPhone, called pencil illusion, which is a free download. You take a picture of something, comes out like a pencil drawing, and, with maybe only a little touch up, it's ready for the tracing tool in vcarve pro, to create the tool path to carve the picture. The Harly Davidson carving came from the Internet, snapped a picture, saved to file, brought it into vcarve, and after sizing, created the tool path, and ready for carving in about 5 minutes. Hopefully I've explained it well enough, at least I get the job done to my liking. Keith

Keith

I just got my cnc hd, what bit did you use and were do you get the acrylic?

Danny
river side creations
kingsland texas

[wolffie]

Hi Tony. The acrylic, I believe would be cast, at any rate, not the kind you by at Home Depot, Lowes, etc. I get it from estreetplastics.com. Fairly well priced. About 3 days shipping time. I buy the 1/2 inch thick material. I originally bought 1 inch, which is pretty cool, but I don't see any reason to go that thick anymore. I buy in 4 foot lenghts, then cut down to size with my bandsaw. Less expensive in the larger sheets. Very easy to cut, and to sand the edges to get a nice reflective edge around it. I leave my router speed on its highest setting, doesn't seem to effect melting or the cut. I do however, slow my cnc down to about 50% with the slider on the control panel, just to stop any chatter in the cuts. I'll do like you did, start a new post with instructions for carving bitmap outline images, to carve the acrylic. The carving must be line art. I don't think you can carve photos like lithophanes. At least I haven't tried, but don't think you'll get good results. I use my 90 degree v bit that came with my shark. Works really well. Keith

Here is Keith's earlier answer

Cheers
Wolffie

[Keith Hodges]

Wolffie, it's clear acrylic. Just poor camera or photography. Photos were taken with my iPhone. The Budweiser sign was actually white, and Linda sigh blue, but you couldn't tell by looking. Pretty cool though.

[River Side Creations]

This is so cool, where do you get the LED,s and how do you mount in the base?

[Eagle55]

Hi Riverside,

I think Kieth may use "the other guy" as a vendor, but here is a link to a post that I put up a while back. These LED's are awesome and really nice to work with and do various things with. On eBay there are two excellent vendor of these products. You can get the non-waterproof version for around $14 for 300 LED strip that is cuttable every 3 LEDs. Power suppliers are cheap and delivery not all that long considering they ship from China.

http://www.cncsharktalk.com/viewtopic.p ... boat+china

The above link gives a couple of vendors for various things. Like I say, I think Keith uses the other one but both are great and one might have some of the things the other doesn't cover, so once you get to ebay do a search for the particular model of LED that you want.

Just a few helpful hints on the model numbers:
5050 is the "super bright" ones that has 3 chip per LED so you can achieve three different brightness levels depending on how you wire them.
5050RGB is the super bright three color which has the same three chips per LED but instead of 3 white chips there is one blue, one green and one red. Different combinations give different colors, all three lit gives you white.
The 5050 also comes in the three color individually (ie all three chips in the LED are blue, or green or red depending on which you buy~~ so you can only do one color)
The 3528 series of led strips are a little less current (and also a little less light but still plenty for most of what we do. As with the 5050 series they come in the three basic colors, a cool white and a warm white and I think might also come in the RGB version (red AND green AND blue)
Between the to main vendors on eBay you can also get various control such as a module that can be switched to blink, strobe, dim etc. I know pretty sure that Keith uses one of the remote controllers that allow you to change the color (and maybe brightness too) with a little hand held remote. I haven't tried that yet but I think its neat.

Once you find the two main distributors on ebay, browse there other products and it will impress you what you can get and how cheap it is. Plug in power modules are equally available and equally as cheap. I know I buy one that is, I think, price about $1 and has $1.99 shipping (no combined shipping available) for a total DELIVERED price of less than $3 USD. Also available are the 2.1mm plug connectors that you can screw onto the box to take the power cord. I think I figured everything up on the lithophane box that I made (and posted) and came up with about $8 for the LED strip, power supply, 6x9 1/4" corian and power connector with about $2 for wood (which was actually small enough to almost be classified as "scrap". (Or as a leather working hobbyist chastised me one time.... there is no such thing as "scrap" there are only "small project supplies")

Here is a link to the inside of my first litho box (lighting concept almost identical to lighting the acrylic signs.
http://www.cncsharktalk.com/viewtopic.p ... tho#p10439

Once you get started messing with these LEDs you won't be able to stop. I have gotten stocked up for hopefully an xmas run on lithos LOL ... kinda like doing acrylic and lithos

Roger

[Keith Hodges]

Eagle55, everything you wrote pretty well sums it up. I'm just glad that we're able to help new members. Can't help but remember, it wasn't all that long ago that I was unpacking my HD, wondering just what the heck I was getting into. It was through the efforts of those that have gone before us, that we're able to do what we do. I still feel like a rank amateur with some of this stuff, that's why this, and Vetrics forums are so important. Keith

[Eagle55]

Yeah Keith,
The forum makes us all better at what we do. There is rarely anything that we all couldn't figure out given enough time, experience and resources. What becomes awesome is that we all bring something to the table. When someone discovers a technique that works well, they share it and save others the time of muddling through it, which means that they have the opportunity to take the technique further and share it with others. I'm sure I could have figured out how to do lithophanes on my own.... eventually.... with a few trial and errors, but with Tony's sharing of his techniques the first one that I did was usable and great looking, which gave me time to work on the presentation of it and the inside lighting of which I also had guidance and direction from the forum. Sometimes our ideas are not perfect when they get shared on the forum but it speeds up and helps the evolution of the technique to go further and just plain helps us to learn more and faster. I like to share my years of experience in electronics and what I have become good at the last few years.... living cheaper. When I go after something I decide what I want first, then find it the cheapest I can get it. I'm the guy that when Lowes marked down some LED track lighting bulbs from $23 each to $2.30 each..... bought all they had. Not sure what I'm gonna do with them yet, but pretty well know the project is going to involve the Shark and know that its gonna cost a whole lot less than it would have. LOL

Roger