Technology advancement has led CNC router applications unprecedented range in the use of designs, material and scope. 3d printing is an extension of 3d CNC router application and the future looks promising.
What is 3d Carving by CNC?
To understand 3d carving a little background in 2d is necessary. Cutting a flat outline in a straight up and down motion by the cutter can be constituted as 2d – short for two dimension. Like length and width or breadth and width. If you take this understanding a bit further by assigning the depth of cut to vary then you have a horizontal cut, a vertical mill or cut and a varying amount of depth. This is classified as 2.5d – two and half dimension. The reason why the fraction of a dimension came into being was that CNC industry was aware that complete 3d – three dimensional was just one step away. Other media such as films and optical glasses had already entered the mainstream and carving 3d was a foregone conclusion. In 2.5d it was just a case of extending the cutter to work in an up and down movement.
What Differentiates 3d from 2,5d?
2.5d CAD / CAM software works at cutting out the material say wood or plastics and removing material from the cut areas (called pocketing). The pocketing was made to look hand carved with the use of v-carving bits that gave a great look to lettering or signage. The process was fairly quick as there was no need for visualization.
3d carving however needed visualization. It was imagining a hologram image of the object but on the CAD/CAM software. It was 3d rendering of converting 3d wire frame models into 2d images. To explain in simple terms every point of a 3d model was plotted and this included the depth points as well. Extrapolating Euclidean geometry did the trick of visualization. This geometry also explains how pattern making for prototyping has led to advances in 3d printing.
How is 3d CNC Router Used in Interior Decoration?
Man is very creative; with 3d CNC routing it was to give Man an inch and he did not stop at that he went for the whole mile. CNC wood routers spin at nearly 24000 rpm (revolutions per minute) with the spindle varying in power from 5 to 15 horsepower. This gives the CNC Router (example of OMNI CNC 1328 model) to machine hundreds of inches in a minute. Carving pictures and design in wood has become so easy that there is no aspect of interior decoration that cannot be carved. Some examples include
• Table legs for armoires, coffee tables, dining tables, chair legs, bedposts
• Cornices and modillions for mantel pieces, kitchen islands, fireplaces, window embellishments
• Kitchen cabinets, doors, handles,
• Wardrobe carvings, Main door relief sculptures
• Partitions, panel designs
• Ceiling designs, wall designs
The list is endless. CNC routers went another step further by making heavy duty routers and carbide tipped bits that treat stone as if it were wood and lo and behold 3d carving in stone became the next big thing. Stone pillars, cornices, signs, company names. Tombstones were just another matter irrespective of whether the material was granite, marble, soapstone or any other stone material. This YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50UNF0VkShM is self-explanatory.