Program
This program is a little bit odd. As you may have gathered from the remainder of the Chestnut Pens Website, I am interested in making pens. It is mighty difficult to carve the surface of pens in a 3D manner with a CNC mill, so I came up with this little utility that enables a 3d surface to be carved onto a pen using only a height map image as the starting point. This is very similar to making a Lithophane, however the intended carved relief is a bit different in that you are aiming for height on the end product rather than a brightness defined by how thin the material is. The height map may be created in a graphics package or from a complex 3d model using the Modelling Studio (amongst other packages).
In addition to making a toolpath for a CNC machine, this program will enable you to output the low relief shape as a DXF, STL or Wavefront OBJ file for input into CAD or 3D printers.
The Program Interface is as below:
The program can be downloaded below. The program, pdf help file and source code are included in the zip file.
Download the Depth Mill Program. (701 kb)
The program is a Windows program, and is known to run on Windows XP and Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit versions). It should work in any 32 bit windows operating system. The program is a single file .exe file and writes a windows .ini file in the directory you put the programs into. The Borland C++ Builder 4 source code is included so that you can check for yourself that the program does nothing unpleasant to your computer.
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