Framed terrain carving of Mourne and Cooley Mountains, Ireland and Northern Ireland

Things You've Made
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Here is another terrain carving of my local mountains that I love to hike around on. I got 30m resolution this time, using TouchTerrain. I have documented the process in photos and a couple of videos of my Portable Primo MPCNC in action:

[43 new items added to shared album] Cooley & Mourne Mtns carving Oct 2022

Google Photos

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Fantastic!

How long did the carving take, and what are the overall measurements?

I set up a 18x36 carve of the region in Wales were I was born and my dad grew up, covering a few hundred square miles. Carving time using a 1/8 rough and a 0.5mm ball but was estimating at 43 hours…

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That is great! I really want to do something like that.

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I love how the lamination adhesive highlights the contours, and that frame finish it off nicely. I also like how the epoxy flow gives the feel of waves and current moving around.

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Looks great Steve! Thanks for sharing your art, and break down of your process/software used. Really inspiring. Cheers!

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The roughing pass took 1:15, and 4:45 for the finishing pass. The carving is 423 x 290 mm, and 35mm thick at its thickest.

I put some comments and details in the Info window for each photo on Google Photos. Be sure to click on the i with a circle around it if you don’t see them

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Thanks Kev, me too! It was a happy accident that the frame’s colour matches the plywood glue colour perfectly after I sprayed it with varnish.

The miniature Irish Sea has a mind of its own…you can see the flows and patterns revealed by mica changed a lot as the resin set. It was a chilly night in the garage, so it took hours to set.

I also like how both the sea and the birch ply terrain look totally different depending on which angle the light comes from.

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Here is a short movie showing that:

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The speed of your CNC is incredible. Or did you speed the video up? :slight_smile:

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No video editing, those are actual speeds. Here is a summary of things I did to speed it up:

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See the details now- thanks for adding that. It’s a ton of useful info.

Watching that 1/4” 3 flute go 75mm/s at 2mm DOC is something! Fastest I’ve pushed mine is 40 at 1.5 and figured it still had some oomph left.

Thanks

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Fantastic job, it turned out looking so real. Looks exactly like a satellite photo but better.

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I have made a detailed tutorial on terrain carving for Instructables. See my post about that here.