Build and Intro

[swisscheese]

Good tips, thanks. I haven't tried using the software yet as I think my machine might die from all the z action! First thing I will try when I upgrade though.
What sort of times did your half-toning take to machine?
Jim

Also another
Start with min hole size at 1 mm and max around 4.
Melamine faced chip board and laminated mdf work good.

I have never timed but I would estimate that one of those doors ( from the tree cabinet) took around 1 to 1 and a half hours. Those doors were 15 thousand holes each. Probably could go faster but as you say you don't want the z axis losing steps as it works very hard and would be a bugger to reset.

[cncJim]

Also another
Start with min hole size at 1 mm and max around 4.
Melamine faced chip board and laminated mdf work good.

I have never timed but I would estimate that one of those doors ( from the tree cabinet) took around 1 to 1 and a half hours. Those doors were 15 thousand holes each. Probably could go faster but as you say you don't want the z axis losing steps as it works very hard and would be a bugger to reset.

Melamine faced chip board is a good idea. I can't remember where I saw it now but after cutting this guy covered the board with black dye. The dye stained all of the cut sections but wiped clean from the melamine leaving a very high contrast design.

15,000 holes for each door! Wow! So that's a minimum of 30,000 z movements? 60,000 for both doors.... Amazing.

I wonder what kind of strain that puts on the z screw?

Jim

[swisscheese]

Melamine faced chip board is a good idea. I can't remember where I saw it now but after cutting this guy covered the board with black dye. The dye stained all of the cut sections but wiped clean from the melamine leaving a very high contrast design.

15,000 holes for each door! Wow! So that's a minimum of 30,000 z movements? 60,000 for both doors.... Amazing.

I wonder what kind of strain that puts on the z screw?

Jim

I think this may be the video you're thinking of...

Aventador Halftone cut by DIY cnc router - YouTube

I have tried this but couldn't get all the black stain off the melamine. I tried ink, watered down ink, acrylic paint and water based paint, all left a grey/light black on the white. The program mentioned above also has an option to do images in the wave pattern.

With respect to the images yes there's a lot of stopping and starting, from memory it was around 45,000 lines of code. I wouldn't be too concerned about the ball screw, that should be alright. My main worry would be with the connection between pulleys and ballscrew with respect to how well they are mounted onto shaft. If you have read my thread you would know I had a few problems with the pulleys coming loose on shaft and chewing the shaft up. I was always checking that the set screws are tight. Now its been a while with no loosening I can be pretty certain it should stay that way.