3d Carving help

whats up everyone, This may be a dumb question but I am overall new to cnc. I built the original mpcnc that i have had the parts for for like 8 years now and just finally put it together a few months ago. I looked in the forums on here and tried to search youtube videos. But can anyone direct me on some tutorials on how to do 3d carvings in estlcam or what program I would need to do 3d carvings/reliefs. I can do signs and simple cut outs already but have not found any good tutorials on how to do the 3d reliefs. Only been finding timelapse mainly not instruction/tutorials

I’d like to find something like that myself. The Estlcam tutorial on YouTube is very basic and seems to recommend ‘learning by doing’. Unless something better comes along your best bet may be a drawing or two from Thingi, some foam insulation board, and trial and error.

1 Like

What part specifically is the first unknown?

When you open an STL file a whole new menu comes up, that is the first step. I highly recommend something less than 1/2" deep to learn on and something small 2"x2" and yes you should always test in foam first.

1 Like

I do not know anything bout the menu that comes up when you open an stl file in estlcam. It gives an option for free machining and block machining. i havent found any instructions for those settings. And I am guessing once i have figured that part out I would just save the file then load it in repitier and save to sd card and into the mpcnc like i do with file when just making regular name signs? or is there additional steps needed?

If you click free machining you’ll see it allows you to set more parameters to your liking than block machining does. This is where foam can be very handy in allowing you to try different settings and see how they affect your carve.

1 Like

If you are using the most current version there are tool tips when you hover on any settings.

Start with block machining uncheck two sided for now, and check out the settings. Both ways are extremly similar. Look at the tool tips and see if it helps. Ask us for more help if anything is not making sense, but feel free to poke around and generate gcode to see what it looks like, you do not have to machine it. Start over if it looks wrong.

From there you will get gcode that gets put on an SD card just like normal.

2 Likes

I went through and messed with the setting and saved the gcode, however when I load it in repitier it looks upside down, like what is supposed to be machined is on the bottom and it just looks flat on the top. Idk if thats just how its looking and it will make the cuts fine as i have not ran it on the machine yet

top view

bottom/underneath view

Repetier is made for additive manufacturing, so it doesn’t know how to display negative movements like we use. If you uncheck “show travel moves” you can see it a little better, but it’s still hard to see 3d stuff like this.

1 Like

thanks for all the replies guys… When I uncheck the show travel it still appears to be upside down by the look of it. I guess I will just have to run a test and see what happens

I can’t really tell from these pictures if it is right side up or not. Maybe a smaller test piece (like a coin sized circle with a triangle embossed on it) would be a good smaller scale test. Or somewhere around here is a coin sized face 3D carve.