{"id":641,"date":"2015-09-18T21:42:47","date_gmt":"2015-09-19T02:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/?p=641"},"modified":"2024-04-30T21:31:57","modified_gmt":"2024-05-01T02:31:57","slug":"cnc-lithophane-jack-o-lantern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/cnc-lithophane-jack-o-lantern\/","title":{"rendered":"CNC Lithophane Jack-O-Lantern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Halloween is approaching so I thought I would share the Jack-o-lantern that I made for Halloween last year (2014).\u00a0\u00a0 I carved an image, lithophane style, into a pumpkin.\u00a0 The pumpkin is cut deeper where the image is lighter and less deep where the image is darker.\u00a0This makes the image appear when the pumpkin is back-lit with a candle.\u00a0 Various programs are available to generate g-code from an image in this way.\u00a0 I used <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Dmap2gcode\/dmap2gcode.html\">Dmap2gcode<\/a> to generate g-code for my jack-o-lantern.<\/p>\n<p>The g-code generated by Dmap2gcode is suitable for a flat surface but a pumpkin is not flat.\u00a0 In order to cut the image onto the uneven surface of the pumpkin an additional step is needed.\u00a0 I used\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Gcoderipper\/gcoderipper.html\">G-Code Ripper<\/a> to add an automatic probing sequence to compensate for the non-flat pumpkin surface.\u00a0 A makeshift probe consisting of a piece of aluminum foil and some alligator clips was used for probing the pumpkin (see video below).\u00a0 Since the pumpkin was soft I was afraid that any other kind of probe might dent the surface before registering the probe data.<\/p>\n<p>In order to hold the pumpkin I cut the bottom off of an ice cream pail and fastened it to the CNC machine table.\u00a0 A ring of scrap wood kept the bucket from flexing to much when the pumpkin was placed in it.\u00a0 Once the bucket was secure I simply placed the pumpkin in the cut pail.\u00a0 Cutting the pumpkin didn&#8217;t generate any large forces because the pumpkin was so soft.\u00a0 I didn&#8217;t have any problem with the pumpkin shifting during the probing\/cutting process.\u00a0 No large forces were generated but a lot of pumpkin flesh was flying around so I covered my machine with plastic sheeting.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/punkin_setup1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-644\" src=\"http:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/punkin_setup1.jpg\" alt=\"OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA\" width=\"444\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/punkin_setup1.jpg 444w, https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/punkin_setup1-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 444px) 100vw, 444px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/punkin_setup2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-643\" src=\"http:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/punkin_setup2.jpg\" alt=\"OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA\" width=\"444\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/punkin_setup2.jpg 444w, https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/punkin_setup2-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 444px) 100vw, 444px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>If you didn&#8217;t recognize it the picture I used was a picture of Linda Blair from the the movie &#8220;The Exorcist&#8221;.\u00a0 Below is a short video of the pumpkin being cut.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xMxAOFiSgyA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>If you are interested in trying this process here are some of the details of my process:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I set the maximum cut depth to 3\/8 inches in Dmap2gcode<\/li>\n<li>I edited the picture so everything that was not of interest was black.\u00a0 That way I can un-select &#8220;Cut Top Surface&#8221; in Dmap2gcode and the cutter will leave unimportant parts of the image untouched<\/li>\n<li>I used a grid of 10&#215;10 points for probing the pumpkin only a few of the probed points are shown in the video<\/li>\n<li>After carving with the CNC machine I did some additional scraping of the inside of the pumpkin until I was happy with how much light was being let through in the image<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Halloween is approaching so I thought I would share the Jack-o-lantern that I made for..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":640,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":969,"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641\/revisions\/969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scorchworks.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}