Research and Inspiration
I took a lot of inspiration from various pattern and gradient sites on the web as well as some videos on YouTube showing what other people are doing with CNC milling.
Mike Anderson (TriArchic Theory) is doing some awesome work with a CNC mill and while it might not be directly applicable to this project his work is inspiring to think bigger and create some models to be cut out of larger pieces (in the realm of feet, not inches) and other materials (really, Himalayan Sea Salt?!).
The Pattern Library and Pattern Cooler served for great sources of inspiration for patterns. I knew that I wanted to stay in the geometric realm and find something that could tiled seamlessly. Both of these sites provided tons of options for these criteria and I spent a good amount of time just falling down the rabbit hole of patterns.
uiGradients helped for the last part of my pattern making process. While the majority of these gradients are in color I just imagined them all in black and white and used them as inspiration for different types of gradient (circle, diamond, wave, etc…). I didn’t end up using any of the gradients that I downloaded but I spent a lot of time visualizing what was possible while looking at these examples.
Process and Progress
The majority of the time I spent on this project dealt with creating images in Affinity photo to use as displacement maps in Blender. Once I had some patterns that I liked, I worked on adding different gradient overlays to affect the undulation of the model in Blender. I enjoyed this process for the most part because seeing the displacement map go from 2D to 3D was very interesting. It took me about about 10-15 patterns and 5-10 gradient overlays for me to find something that I felt I wanted to take to the next step.
Once I had my model ready for Vectric and the ShopBot it was time to head over to the Innovation Floor at the Engineering Building. I scheduled four hours for myself because I wanted to be able to take my time. And it was definitely worth it. I was able to zero out the machine with no issues and then went into Vectrix to set up my toolpaths. Some of the screenshots in our instructions were a little bit different from what was showing in the program. I chalked it up to one being an updated version of the software. Setting up my material and importing my model both went smoothly. When it came to creating my toolpaths I slowed down a bit and paid extra attention. I was able to work through everything pretty easily and it was nice to have a shop buddy for this first run. Once I checked the previews and was comfortable with my toolpaths I imported it into the ShopBot for my rough pass. I’m not sure why but the rough pass didn’t take much material off and it only lasted about 4 minutes. Everything went smoothly though and it was time for the finish pass. This took about an hour and forty-five minutes and went just as smoothly as the first pass. The only hiccup I ran into was that the material was left with a slight edge on two sides that I had to remove with a chisel. Aside from that my first CNC milling experience was a successful one and I can’t wait to get at it again.
Reflection
I was pretty anxious about this part of the project since we really only had one shot at getting it right. I found myself thinking about the process before going to bed on Sunday night and as soon as I woke up on Monday morning. I chose to block out 4 hours for myself and I’m glad that I did because I spent the first hour going through the set up a few times just to double and triple check. Once I had my toolpaths saved and ready to go I got even more anxious as I hit the “Cut Part” button. Luckily everything went rather smoothly!!! I didn’t have any trouble with either of my passes however there was a couple spots where the tool didn’t cut all the way to the side leaving a little bit of and edge that I ended up taking off with a chisel and some sand paper.
It was nice to have a shop buddy there with me too so we were able to look through everything together. I’m grateful that mine came out the way that it did because we ran into some unexpected problems when it was my partner’s turn to mill their piece. The machine literally shut down by itself in the middle of the second pass. Twice! It was unfortunate because his design was coming out very nicely and I wanted to see it get finished.