Thursday, October 1, 2009

My Head Post

Frankly speaking what fascinate me to make a indexer for my machine??... This story begins with the day when i joined CNCzone Forum... One of the guy their working on its 4th axis created a BEAR head on wood...He posted the picture of machined head stand aside with its computer monitor... and that was the really great work i ever seen.. i downloaded that picture and saw it many time that day...

At that time i was very new to CNC machine.. i never built my CNC machine at that time..i was just collecting the pictures, ideas and reading the posts of zone members... its a really great website for all of us with zeal of working with CNC....

Keeping that guy work in my mind, to make some real carving on 4th axis, i decided to model my head and make a Head post... It was a difficult challenge for me as i am weak in both CAD and CAM softwares.. I used many software's to accomplish this task. I used AutoCad, Artcam, FaceGen and 3D studioMax for this model..

The height of the piece is 220 mm (8.66") and the biggest diameter is 67mm (2.63")...First i created simple tapered column in Autocad then unwrapped it in the Artcam..Added top and bottom leaves... I created my face in FaceGen, imported in Artcam unwrapped it and pasted it onto existing unwraped column model.. The model is then wrapped and brought into 3D studiomax as STL file, and i added Turbo Smooth modifier to it...

At last I have 100% success to create accurate and reliable toolpath in Artcam... and this was the first time i succeeded in understanding the 4th axis toolpath creation within Artcam..

The complete time for Roughing 13 Minutes and Finishing pass took 1 Hr and 13Minutes...The stepover and tolerance were kept high so the quality was not come out great.. but this is in my hand.. The main was i know how to create efficient 4th axis toolpath..

If i decrease the stepover and tolerance values..you will see the quality, details and real beauty of it..

PS:
Following are the Youtube video links of machining the above workpiece on my indexer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ezG0ELmerk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9fijZhr1PA
Posted by Khalid Khattak at 6:59 PM
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5 comments:

  1. Khalid,

    Very Cool project!

    I downloaded FaceGen, will the free version let me export the model/face I create?

    I see the export option in the video, but not in the free version, is that why it's free, because they don't allow export?

    Thanks,
    Swicther

    ReplyDelete

  2. Thanks Switcher for your comments...No the free version has no export Feature... I did my head with the help of one of my friend who own the FaceGen...

    He took my three pictures and did my head in FaceGen... I exported it into STL...

    ReplyDelete

  3. Thanks, Khalid

    I think that would be a cool project, to work with FaceGen & create a family portrait, only use the part of the head from the ears forward, then put them on a flat sheet of wood, kinda like a 3D family portrait.

    Maybe use FaceGen to get the face .STL file, then combine everything in Vectric Cut3D.

    Thanks for letting us know what software you used, for this great project. :)

    ReplyDelete

  4. congratulations for your site, very beautiful
    nice work Khalid

    ReplyDelete

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