The Large Press installation is almost done now! This week I’m cutting the final parts — the vacuum plenum for the press itself… This is a somewhat complicated task it turns out, but I believe I’ve got it figured out.
I’ve successfully moved my ShopBot CNC machine from the 3rd to the 1st floor… After cutting a large vacuum plenum to hold 4×8 foot by quarter-inch plywood sheets flat and solidly in place on the machine, I experimented yesterday by carving the dozen blocks for my prints for Baren Forum Mythical Beasts Exchange (#27).
My kids gave me a nifty and TINY little all-digital video camera for XMAS, and I used it to shoot a 2 1/2 minute video of the computer-guided tool in action:
You may want to turn down your volume as the router is very loud and obnoxious… What you’ll see are some brief cuts of V-bit carving to outline the printing shapes, then clearing outside the V-carved areas with a 1/4″ down-spiral — I’ve also shown a couple of views of the control screen — the first shows each line of program code as it’s executed — I think we’re at about line 14,000 in the shot — later there’s a view showing the cutting head position in X (length) Y (width) and Z (height) coordinates.
The blocks turned out quite nicely! I’ll be printing in pinks and greens for this one…
'Hannya' January 22, 2006, chuban (about 10x8) woodcut from twelve blocks for barenforum.org exchange 27 (mythical beasts)