[warranator]

Hi
Can anybody steer me in the correct direction for doing 3d milling on a lathe. Our lathe has 4 axis capability and i want to experiment with maybe milling out a small head (pilot) from a photo for a rc plane. I have been in the industry for 15 years but have recently become bored so have decided to notch things up a bit. I also need to learn 3d software (cad/cam) as I have a cnc router on the way.
Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers
Wozza

[CNCRim]

First you will need alot of memory on board...... and then everything else is pretty much from CAD/CAM.

[warranator]

Memory shouldn't be a problem as I am sure I can drip feed from main pc. Anyone know of a program that will convert a photo into a 3d program?

[Vermiculite]

This might work: A head/helmet minus the face wouldn't be too hard to draw in cad, and Artcam can do a relief from a photo. So once you have made your blanks/helmet you can put whoever’s face you want on it.

regards
Verm

[awerby]

It has the capability to create 3d reliefs from 2d gray-scale photos, using a heightfield algorithm (light pixels go high, dark ones low) that creates a mesh. Then its CAM side will write a toolpath and produce the G-code. I'm assuming you have the ability to fix the lathe headstock firmly in one position while the milling is going on. You can download DeskProto (DeskProto offers rapid prototyping using an affordable cnc milling machine: DeskProto is 3D cam software for model making.) and use it for a month before having to pay (then I'll sell it to you at a discount). It will also write G-code for your router.

Andrew Werby
ComputerSculpture.com — Home Page for Discount Hardware & Software

[warranator]

I do have the ability to fix the headstock on the lathe but I was hoping to find software that would allow me to use the c axis, basically like polar coordinate interpolation. Will your software allow this? Do you only take one photo? or do you have to take four photo's, one from each side.

[awerby]

not lathes, so if your control software wants moves designated for the "C" axis, you'd probably have to edit the G-code file to globally substitute C for X or Y.

Deskproto's 2-d to 3-d functionality is limited to producing reliefs. You could use 4 different photos to put 4 different reliefs at 90 degree angles, but you seem to be talking about constructing a freestanding object from various views, which isn't something it does. There are software programs that do this with varying degrees of success (google "photogrammetry"), although the results I've seen are far from perfect or automatic. You're really better off using a 3-d CAD program to construct a true 3-d model, using your photos as references.

Andrew Werby
ComputerSculpture.com — Home Page for Discount Hardware & Software