Imagine you have a customer with there own design/image and they want you to make a copy of it in metal. ( disclaimer here... this was before the days of $300 3D printers )
You know how to carve wax... you know it will be hard to make an accurate copy but you don't want to pass up the job....
I went from the art work above in black and white...
to the wax above it...
It took the machine longer to cut the wax than I did making the file that created the wax..... The machine works from 2D image files so without experience you could be carving waxes like this in one day
... since we're a casting shop, you know what comes next... yes we made a mold and cast a masters in bronze and pewter production pieces.
The machine that did this, carve the wax from a Jpeg that I got in an email and turned into a usable wax in under an hour..... It didn't cost a lot and I didn't have to learn complex software to be able to use it. It does require that you have a Mac, doesn't run on a pc (sorry Bill) I edited the Jpeg with something similar to Photo Shop. Ok, I could keep going on and on I'll save that for another time. It's call Waxcutter...
...it takes up about 14" square on a table. It can cut flat parts one sided and rings. It can also cut the sides of a ring and with a little practice you can cut two sided flat pieces too. Best of all its made in the USA by people who use the machine and the software is easy to use. Oh the software is called "Easywax" and it comes with the machine.
I will be showing some things made by this amazing little machine soon.
The Guys who developed this machine are working on an updated version!
ReplyDeleteI will be posting pictures of the new version soon!