How do I make a concave in wood with Easel?

Easel
1

Hi
I have a 1000x1000 X-Carve. How do I set up Easel to make a concave circle in a piece of wood?

Thanks in advance
Greg

2

Are you just wanting a recessed circle, or are you wanting to have it be a dish?

3

Hi

Like a dish or bowl

Thanks
Greg

4

That requires 3D Carving which Easel can’t do (Easel is a 2.5D CAM package). You will have to look into use something like Fusion 360.

5

Thanks

Greg

6

is it possible to do with importing a gradient svg file?

7

You’d probably need to break it up into separate pieces like this:

Pasted image856Ă—378 95.3 KB

9

No, but if you have the G-Code, I believe you can use Easel to run it.

10

Here is a better gradient example:

Pasted image1203Ă—513 146 KB

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12

There are no “slopes” here. It’s not a gradient, it’s a bunch of overlapping circles, and the wireframe looks good:

Pasted image1094Ă—534 114 KB

14

You’re likely very right about that… but I tweaked it a bit, and I’m very surprised how smooth it looks:

16

That looks pretty nice. Can you share the Easel project?

17

Sure:

19

Yeah… as you saw there is no gradient. I did this in Corel Draw. It only took a couple of minutes. In Corel Draw jargon you:

  1. Make the circle.
  2. Use the “Contour Tool” to make a “to center” group of rings. You’ll likely need to play with the colors to get the curve right.
  3. “Break Apart” the contour from the right-click menu.
  4. Export to SVG
  5. Import into Easel.
  6. If the curve isn’t quite right you can play with the colors of the broken contour with “Adjust → Brightness/Contrast/Intensity…” to tweak them.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s pretty quick.

21

I had thought the the X Carve itself was limited to just 2.5D, not just Easel.

Are you saying that the X Carve can do 3D if you have the right software?

22

The X-Carve can do some very nice relief carving, which is traditionally referred to as 2.5d. True 3D with overhangs cannot be done on the X-Carve or any 3-Axis CNC machine.

24

which is traditionally referred to as 2.5d…semantics…

25

I thought 2.5d was when it cut one layer, moved the bit down along the Z axis, then cut the next. Similar to 3d-printer layering.

The X-Carve can cut a relief line that goes up and down on each pass according to the profile being cut as long as you have the tools to generate the G-Code for it. With the G-Code import tool, I believe Easel can run that code as well. I thought that was what was referred to as 3d.

Is that not the case?

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27

I’ve imported V-Carves into Easel and they cut fine moving the x,y, and z simultaneously. I believe Easel can run the operations, it just can’t generate the G-Code for it

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29

I just used this gradient and it makes a perfectly smooth hole with a 3/4" round nose bit. Since this was so easy for you could I possibly get you to make one that is only .25" deep.