[davidbhewes@com]

Where can i find a free, cheap or trail software for picture engraving? I am not sure if the is the right term. I am going to buy Mach 3 and I would like a way to take a photo and create a 3d wood carving.

[blackbeard52]

Vectric Photo engrave...www.vectric.com (trial)

[davidbhewes@com]

thanks...anything cheaper

[Switcher]

CAD to Mill DXF Conversion to gcodes for the low price of $25.00.

http://www.cad2gcode.com/id31.html

(I havn't tried this yet, looks good for dxf files)


.

[Mike Stevenson]

I tried cad2gcode before I bought Vectric. cad2gcode was not as good as Vectric was at converting a photo to the vectors that actually drive your machine. Complex photo detail has much better resolution in Vectric also. I think cad2gcode is certainly worth a try to get your feet wet. Ultimately I think you will like Vectric software better when you see the wood creations actually coming off your machine.

[jhowelb]

Where can i find a free, cheap or trail software for picture engraving? I am not sure if the is the right term. I am going to buy Mach 3 and I would like a way to take a photo and create a 3d wood carving.

Mach has Lazy cam built in.

[dertsap]

http://cnc4free.org/

doesn t get any cheaper than this at 20 bucks for the tutorial and all the software is free , the next best thing to produce as high quality pictures would be artcam at however many thousands of bucks that is ,
i feel the freeware still rides higher quality reliefs than artcam

[davidbhewes@com]

I have the trial version of lazycam but can not figure how to get it to work. I imported a picture and nothing happened. I did not see any helpful info in the help so I thought it did not support it. Does anyone know how to use it?

[Mike Stevenson]

Lazy Cam does NOT convert photos into a machinable cad file like Vectric does. Belive me Vectric is the way to go if you want to go from a photo to a CNC program fast. Lazy Cam will however create a tool path if you already have a cad format file like a DXF.

[jhowelb]

I have the trial version of lazycam but can not figure how to get it to work. I imported a picture and nothing happened. I did not see any helpful info in the help so I thought it did not support it. Does anyone know how to use it?

Demo won't do it, you should even buy Lcam Pro.

In Mach click file>lcam
then click image at top of page, when you've processed the image click gcode.

[yohudi]

thanks...anything cheaper

Try CamBam...

camBam will generate gcode from a greyscale image without any problem whatsoever.. there's a free beta.. and lots of help and support via the CamBam forum..


hope it helps

[Tony Mac]

Hello David,

PhotoVCarve user and CNC machine builder Stefan Welschoff from CNC-Wood in Germany carved this stunning 3D photograph using PhotoVCarve.

Tony

[davidbhewes@com]

Thanks for everyone's help.

What program would make it look the most hand carved?

[Mike Stevenson]

Great looking Photo Carve Tony.

[yohudi]

Thanks for everyone's help.

What program would make it look the most hand carved?

The answer is none of the above really.. the software(whichever it is) will simply interpret the content of the image.. "cut in the style of" is not really in photo-carving software featuresets..

however, if you want a hand-carved look you could try some edits to the image before you process it... distress it a bit.. or texturise it.. using a hand-carved image as the basis for the texturing...

hope this helps

Danny

[jimini]

Look for Profiler6 I've had very good results with it.
Most of the posts of picture I've done, are with profiler.
Jimini

[gcioffi]

hi

nice job

you use photocarve and mach3 ?

[OneAndy]

This interests me, as well. I just posted a similar topic...

can vetric do engraving on 3-d surfaces, too? Like on a curved surface?

[Mike Stevenson]

This interests me, as well. I just posted a similar topic...

can vetric do engraving on 3-d surfaces, too? Like on a curved surface?

Unfortunately no Andy, Mastercam however does that very well.

[dertsap]

gmax will create some really cool stuff for engraving , you can wrap a jpeg around a ball or what ever you want ,
http://www.rainnea.com/cnc.htm this software will run within gmax and create code for 3-5 axis , its a pretty cool piece of software , ive played with it some but haven t had a chance to put the code to the machine to see how it performs ,but i have used freemill with gmax as a modeler and was appreciative of the detail that i cut out on my machine , it was outright wicked
one thing i will say is gmax is an extremely powerfull software once a guy gets the hang of it

plus its free , which keeps 500 - 1000 bucks in my pocket

i don't engrave for weak at heart :bat: