I have only tried paper, card board, and wood (for engraving). I have not yet attempted other materials.
I was able to cut through paper/card board stock up to 0.27mm thick in a single pass cut. See Creality CV-01 for more details.
I have only tried paper, card board, and wood (for engraving). I have not yet attempted other materials.
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Wow, its been a long time. I have not been cutting much foam recently. In fact the cat savaged the wiring on my home brew machine and I had a tough time putting it back together. Recently I purchased a Creality CV-01 laser cutter/engraver. Its very similar to a hot wire foam cutter. I would call it 2.5 dimensions, as in addition to the x and y, you can turn the laser on and off, or even modulate the laser power level. Cutting is almost like the foam wire cutter, except that you can turn the laser on/off allowing you not need a single continuous path for the machine to follow. Engraving is not possible with the foam wire cutter, so this is a new function to be experimented with. The machine runs GCODE so in that respect its very much like the foam wire cutter.
To convert an image file to a two dimensional DXF you need to first convert the image file to a vector/path type object. This vector/path can then be saved as a DXF type file. I have used Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape for reading in an image file, converting it to a vector/path and saving as a DXF. The old version of Illustrator did not save DXF files, so I improvised, using a 3D program Cinema 4D, which has the ability to read in the output of Illustrator and save it as a DXF. Inkscape can save directly to a DXF, and its free versus having to use the other two programs.
Added Krusty the Clown from the Simpsons TV show. The zip file includes a Krusty the Clown DXF, a silouette, and a g-code NC file.
Added a Silhouette of the famous Bart Simpson in the Cartoon section. There is also a 3D animated Bart Simpson GIF if you are interested.
To save some of the older files that I uploaded as .DXF files to your computer you can right click the download link and select the "save target as" from the drop down menu. This will save the file as a "filename.DXF" on your computer. If you just left click the file name, you will download the data "text" which is actually just the DXF text file. You could also save this by right clicking in the downloaded text window and selecting the "save as" option from the menu. This will again let you save the file as a .DXF
Hope this all makes sense. All new files that I upload will be .ZIP archives which are easier to work with. Posted DXF and gcode of a wolf howling in front of the moon.
Looking at cookie cutter shapes gave me a good idea. Yes the very popular gingerbread boy would make an excellent shape for CNC cutting. There are several variants in the file, so you can choose your favorite. The individual files are also small, less than 500 lines of Gcode, so you can even use the boys to test drive the demonstration version of Mach3. Download the the gingerbread boy super pack and have fun.
I found a set of rather intricate butterfly designs on the web. I particularly like the detail found in how the wings were drawn. As an added bonus the designs did not need to be reworked for cutting by a two dimensional machine. I cut one of the butterflies, scaling to around 5 inches, and it looks great.
I found more resources for open source / Free 2D/3D modelling programs. Draftsight is a free 2D modelling program from the makers of Solidworks. Draftsight is similar to a light weight AutoCAD. Free-cad and Heekscad are two open source 3D modelling programs. Links to all three programs on the links page.
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Updates
I will list additional DXF shape artwork files that are added to the website here. Archives
November 2021
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