# Carving duplicator or CNC service?



## bbrown (Sep 3, 2008)

Hey folks,

I carve Bellamy eagles and other folk motifs. It's very slow, laborious work and I have been wondering if perhaps there might be some way to at least get the blanks cut to shape, with my doing the detail work after the bulk of the material is gone. It can take 6-8 weeks to make one eagle and I would like to speed that up if possible.

Here's examples of my work….https://www.lineandberry.com/bellamy-eagles

I looked at "carving duplicators" but these seem ideal for guitars, violins, and gunstocks, but perhaps not so much for the kind of work that I do. My first question is: are there folks out there who a duplicator service that could handle these types of carvings?

I'm thinking that someone with a CNC might be able to handle this for me. That said, I know next to nothing about this technology. So, I figured I just ask the general question here about what I could expect from the current technology and also how to go about finding someone to cut blanks (and ideally as much detail as a machine could manage) for me. Of course, I imagine that it might also be cost prohibitive due to the amount of set up required, etc.

Thanks for any advice,
-Bill


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## Lazyman (Aug 8, 2014)

With a good 3D model, the CNC could either rough it out or go all the the way to a finished carving that requires just some touch up to remove tool marks, if you wanted. The process of 3D carving usually involves a roughing steps using an end mill and then a finish step using a smaller ballnose bit so if you wanted to do the carving manually, you would just take over after the roughing step.

There are several ways to create a 3D model but I have only experimented with that a little.


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## HokieKen (Apr 14, 2015)

Your Eagles are fantastic Bill. I always enjoy seeing them 

Like Nathan alluded to, the first hurdle to getting blanks made would be getting a 3D model made. There are various ways to go about that. There are a lot of 3D scanning services that could take one of your carvings and scan it to create a 3D model that could be used for CNC carving. I'm not very familiar with the processes and not sure how precise fine details could be replicated with scanning but I'm sure you could probably find a service and reach out to get more details about cost and what they can do.

If you just wanted rounded blanks with no detail, that should be fairly easy to model even without a scanner. Someone with the understanding and tools to take necessary measurements could create a model like that. It would be more time-consuming but still probably less expensive.

In either case - with full detail or just a rough blank - you would then have a digital model that could be scaled to any size you wanted and used for CNC production.

Which brings use to your second hurdle - CNC production.

Your model could be created in full detail with modern CNC machines if that's what you wanted. Or you could have blanks roughed to shape so all you have to do is the final touches. The capability of CNC machines to carve in detail that intricate isn't an issue with modern 5-axis machines. And there are lots of shops that can do that work for you. The issue you may run into though is size. I don't know what sizes you're considering but anything with a dimension of more than 36" or so or that's taller than 12" will require a large format machine. But those machines certainly exist so that's not a showstopper. You'd just have to find a shop with a large format machine that takes on outside work. If that turned out to be hard to find or cost-prohibitive, you could always have the blanks machined in 2 or 3 pieces and then glued together.

Hope all that helps


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## Lazyman (Aug 8, 2014)

One way to mitigate the dimension issue is with tiling as long as the smaller of the dimensions will fit between and under the gantry. Vectric's VCarve and Aspire both have this capability. Basically, it automatically breaks the cut into tiles that will fit within its machinable area. After doing the first carve, you slide the piece by the offset defined in software and resume the cut. I have done a piece over 4' long on my 24×24" CNC machine and it works well.

BTW, Vectric Aspire has the ability to model 3D objects for machining. You can start with an image, define and create the 2D vectors and then use the modeling tools to add the 3rd dimension. Supposedly work pretty well but it is a pricey piece of software. I am sure that you can find some videos on the Vectric website for tutorials.


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## JAAune (Jan 22, 2012)

Easiest method I'm aware of is to carve a sample of each design and paint it neutral gray. Companies like Neomek can scan it to high resolution. It cost around $600 for us (a few years ago) to get an 8"x10" carving scanned.

Full detail carving on a 5-axis machine will probably be expensive. I'd recommend having a 3-axis CNC carve with just enough detail that you can finish most of the surfaces with one or two cuts using your carving tools. CNC routers can hog material fast but using fine tooling to mimic hand-carved details will be slow. Small diameter cutters require many passes to cover what a gouge can do in one pass.


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## DevinT (Mar 25, 2021)

Have you seen the carving duplicator in the book titled "Router Magic"? They duplicate some pretty detailed pieces with it. The book tells you not only how to build it (supply requirements, cut list, and more) but also how to use the thing. Could be an option.


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## bbrown (Sep 3, 2008)

Thanks Devin, I have seen some videos also on YouTube.

JAAune, these are very helpful. Based on this and the info from HokieKen and Lazyman, I think I would start with some of my simpler folk carving forms such as the Nantucket whale, pineapple, or rooster. These are much more basic and might lend themselves to a CNC. I also cannot charge all that much for an 16" x 8" gold leafed pineapple, yet it does represent an awful lot of work. I would love to cut the price in half if I could make them faster.

And I do not want the final detail, just the basic roughed out form. It's nice to see actual carving marks.

Thanks folks. Now I need to find someone with a CNC capable of doing this.


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