I have just finished building a homemade cnc machine and decided I would cut my teeth on a lego minifigure. Those of you who have a cnc will appreciate that there is quite a steep initial learning curve due to the fact that you need to get a handle on three separate pieces of software to get the result you want:
Firstly, you need to draw/model the item you want to cut (I could have used a model from the google warehouse, but sketchup suffers from faceting due to the fact that it uses straight lines to create it's curves. Seeing as I wanted to have a larger figure meant that these facets would probably be visible).
I ended up modelling the figure in Rhino, which I am also new too. It took a little time, but was relatively painless. The best thing about Rhino is that it is a nurbs modeller, meaning that it is resolution independent and a model can be scaled up to any size without any ill effects :cool.
Here is a screen grab of the model in Rhino:
Once I had the model, I went about "slicing" it. The reason being that I only have limited length milling bits. The idea is that you slice your model into pieces the depth of the material you are cutting out of - in my case 12mm (1/2") mdf. I then arranged these into a 200mmx200mm (8"x8") area.
The second piece of software you need is to produce the g-code to send to the CNC. Since I already have Rhino I invested in a 3rd party add on (RhinoCam) to take care of this. Again fairly painless, but just took some time to go through the steps. I did 3 stages of cutting - 2D profiling, 3D roughing and 3D finishing. Probably not the best idea to start with a 3d model, but there's nothing like throwing yourself in the deep end!
The last pices of software you need is one which reads the g-code and controls the physical movement of the router. I went with Mach3, which is pretty much the default for homemade cnc users.
Being a home made machine means its not particularly speedy.From start to finish, the milling took about 1.5 hrs.
Apart from running the router into one of the holding screws! :cryI was pretty happy with the results.
You can see it here still on the bed of the cnc:
After cutting the pieces from their holding tabs, they were glued togther and given a quick sand.
This how they looked:
And finally, how the pieces looked put togther:
My kids are mad on lego Harry Potter and lego Star Wars, so I told them I would make them figures to paint as they wanted. This was really just to get my feet wet and I will be scaling the next figure up. Then I'll look at working on some accesories (dependent on which figures they decide they want!
)
Firstly, you need to draw/model the item you want to cut (I could have used a model from the google warehouse, but sketchup suffers from faceting due to the fact that it uses straight lines to create it's curves. Seeing as I wanted to have a larger figure meant that these facets would probably be visible).
I ended up modelling the figure in Rhino, which I am also new too. It took a little time, but was relatively painless. The best thing about Rhino is that it is a nurbs modeller, meaning that it is resolution independent and a model can be scaled up to any size without any ill effects :cool.
Here is a screen grab of the model in Rhino:
Once I had the model, I went about "slicing" it. The reason being that I only have limited length milling bits. The idea is that you slice your model into pieces the depth of the material you are cutting out of - in my case 12mm (1/2") mdf. I then arranged these into a 200mmx200mm (8"x8") area.
The second piece of software you need is to produce the g-code to send to the CNC. Since I already have Rhino I invested in a 3rd party add on (RhinoCam) to take care of this. Again fairly painless, but just took some time to go through the steps. I did 3 stages of cutting - 2D profiling, 3D roughing and 3D finishing. Probably not the best idea to start with a 3d model, but there's nothing like throwing yourself in the deep end!
The last pices of software you need is one which reads the g-code and controls the physical movement of the router. I went with Mach3, which is pretty much the default for homemade cnc users.
Being a home made machine means its not particularly speedy.From start to finish, the milling took about 1.5 hrs.
Apart from running the router into one of the holding screws! :cryI was pretty happy with the results.
You can see it here still on the bed of the cnc:
After cutting the pieces from their holding tabs, they were glued togther and given a quick sand.
This how they looked:
And finally, how the pieces looked put togther:
My kids are mad on lego Harry Potter and lego Star Wars, so I told them I would make them figures to paint as they wanted. This was really just to get my feet wet and I will be scaling the next figure up. Then I'll look at working on some accesories (dependent on which figures they decide they want!
)
