Saskatoon TechWorks Forum

So I'm participating in two secret santas this year, one at work and then the redditgifts one. For both of these, I plan on creating CNC halftones. The software I plan on using is Halftoner 1.4, found here: http://jasondorie.com/page_cnc.html. It allows the use of lines, dots or boxes for creating the image and exports directly to DXF.

I'll be detailing the progress of my redditgifts one. The image I'll be using is a portrait that my match posted on reddit of, presumably, her grandmother. I've attached a copy of the original image as well as a couple ideas of what the half tone could look like (one using dots, one using lines). The image can be made lighter or darker by tweaking the spacing of the dots, etc. Also have control over the angle of the lines and their amplitude/wavelength. Quite cool. The previews were generated using about a 16" x 24" workpiece which is why the detail is so fine.

Not quite sure yet what material I want to use... I might do some small samples using plywood & acrylic to decide which I like better.

Al thinks those examples might be too fine even on a larger work piece, here's one with a higher spacing.

My interpretation

Tried some test runs using both dots and lines, terrible results with both. It seemed like the bit was plunging too deep so my lines/dots ended up overlapping. The simplest explanation would be that I'm zero-ing the Z axis incorrectly, but I'd like to think I'm not a complete moron. I'll try again another day with my Z zeroed slightly higher than the top of the material and see if that produces better results. If I can't get this working I might just do a nice set of coasters.