Lithophanes and acrylic carvings

[Keith Hodges]

Decided to take lithophanes one step further today, by carving one for my son and new daughter-in-law. Carved their picture with the background removed, a 3D carving of wedding rings from Vector Art3D, and carved their date of marriage on top of the 3D rings, then the v carved text. All pretty cool. Love the 3D effect in Corian. Then, my new interest, carving acrylic's. They are absolutely amazing. The blue LED lights are a perfect touch.

[tonydude]

Keith,

Great litho and acrylic. How thick is the acrylic and what are your setting for cutting it. What bits did you use, and speeds and feeds.

just keep them coming.

Tony

[Keith Hodges]

Hi Tony. The acrylic is 1/2 inch thick x 6" x 12". Router speed needs to be slow to prevent melting the acrylic. Not sure about the speed, but turned mine down about half it's normal speed. The speed of the shark, I slowed to about 75% on the FRO on my control panel. This was a test piece, so I used the settings as far as depth etc. as they came from Vector Art3D. I discovered a button at the end of the Vector Art3D cutting parameters page where you save your files, to save it for V Carve pro. Then you load that into vcp to set your size of material. The bit is .125 ball nose for the rough pass AND the finish pass. I made a dragon in 1 inch thick acrylic which is pretty cool, but probably just as nice in the 1/2 inch material. I'll post a pic later, can't post pics from my phone for some reason, just my computer.

[Keith Hodges]

Heres the dragon I was talking about. Have the same one in red, which I think I like better, but I was assembling my prototype light frame with the first lights I grabbed, blue. All this came from the Vetric forum, info about the acrylic carvings, light bases, etc. Only difference, their using Aspire, to get rid of the carved area around the dragon, which looks much better. I'll have Aspire some day, just not now.

[Eagle55]

Kieth,

I really love the acrylic carving. The LED lighting has a very awesome effect. It would be neat to see a photo v-carve item similar to the lithos done in acrylic. The surface appears to be quite smooth on the dragon, what was your step over rate on the finishing pass? Also would love to see the lighting details in the base.

Roger

[Keith Hodges]

I've encluded a link to the Vetric Forum concerning the acrylic carvings. All the credit, and then some goes to the members on that site, and this link will get you there. Theres 7 pages on the subject, encluding different members carvings that they did. Its really cool stuff. The 3D files, (dragon, and praying hands) came from Vector Art3D, and the settings are preset, but I'll enclose a photo of my settings. I'm sure you can change the settings, but why? The speed rate of the router isn't right. If you don't slow the router down, you'll melt the acrylic, leaving bonded burrs to your carvings. I used the lights mentioned at that forum, from Oznium.com. Since the material I used was 6 inches wide, I purchased the 4.7 inch light strip, which is plently long enough. They don't give much in the way of options as far as length, next longer lenth is 9.something inches. Although you can cut them like the LEDs I've been using in my litho light boxes. I just cut a groove in the bottom of the base, run the wire through the bottom, set the lights inside, and set the acrylic on top. Haven't fastened it down yet, since I'm going to make a new base. I was toying with putting a light switch in the base, thus the hole. But decided a switch on the wire itself would be better. So disregard the large hole, this is my first attempt at the base, so getting the bugs worked out.

http://www.vectric.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=8645