3D Relief Map of Mt. Hood

Projects
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After about three months of putting together my Xcarve, tweaking it, learning the software, and getting past hardware and software issues, I’ve finally got a piece that matches the vision.

mthood_final_stained.jpg1327×677 782 KB

This is a relief map of Mt. Hood and surrounding terrain, looking south. It’s about 11x7.5x1.5", cut in red oak. The rough cut took 4 hours, the fine cut 9 hours. I’m working on reducing those times, now that I have a more powerful spindle. I had to do a workaround to get PhotoVCarve to cut this deep, which adds time, but I think it turned out well. I have an inexhaustible supply of terrain data available, so I’m just about ready to start cranking these out.

These forums were a huge help when I ran into problems, so I really appreciate the time and advice of this community.

  • Kelly
13 Likes
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I would love to be able to carve this exact thing, since I can see Mt Hood from my house (or I would be able to, if it weren’t raining buckets every day in the Pac NW these days…). How can I learn to do this?

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This looks amazing. Where did you get the terrain data from?

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USGS has an elevation database. Took some figuring out how to use GIS applications and get the data, but it’s got a ton of stuff there.

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This should definitely be a Tip Jar Project! Doing bathymetric carvings is one of my main reasons to have an XC! :sunglasses:

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@KellyMckiernan That is a beautiful carving.

Does PhotoVCarve go from bitmap to gcode or do you have to use something else to get the cut paths to the X-Carve?

I’ve been making elevation maps with my 3d printer and would love to see some of them cut into wood.

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Thanks. :slight_smile: PhotoVCarve generates gcode, which I’ve been sending to the X-Carve with PicSender. There are a couple of caveats:

  • There’s a bug in PhotoVCarve that causes the spindle to plunge full depth on the back-cut. So I’ve needed to create separate PVC files for each depth of cut (e.g. one for 0.07", another for 0.14", and so on, up to 20 for 1.4"), and combine them in VCarve Desktop.
  • I’m changing how I send files, I just added a headless Raspberry Pi with wifi as the controller, and am working my way through GrblWeb now; I can send smaller files (<5MB), but larger files don’t seem to work.
1 Like
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Thanks for the reply. Useful information. I might have to break down and buy something like VCarve, but I’m not done exploring free options.

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I’m sure there are several ways of getting to the same result; I just used the method that matched the software I had available and had the most experience with.