NASA Blue marbel Wooden map done with badog CNC artisan *amazing*

[asselin22]

I found this awesome article about this dedicated guy who did an awesome wooden map for earth day, I thought I'd share with you. I know it's not my work but it's finished project, with pics and good discription.

45 years ago, on the very first Earth Day millions of humans decided to stand up for their planet. They joined force against pollution, deforestation, pesticides and oil spills … issues that continue to resonate with us today. Since we all have to care about this planet that we are living in, I wanted to make a wooden world map and do something to raise awareness and to show that we are all responsible whether is in your city, in your neighborhood or in your own life to protect our beloved earth from any kind of harm.

So for this occasion I wanted contribute with something I’m good at, and what I’m good at is creating something from pieces of materials with CNC machining.
My ide a was to engraving a 2.5D world map on a piece of wood, but this is not that impressive right? You are probably saying this has been done a million times and is not that original of an idea. But to that i say to you: What if the world map is a high resolution detailed height map from the Blue marble NASA project map? That would be awesome. In order to make my projet more realistic i thought that i would go to the NASA website and check out what height maps they had for the earth. In eessence, use NASA records to sculpt the earth correctly and with realistic details. For who doesn’t know what it is, this is a small definition:
NASA’s “Blue Marble” pictures of Earth show each month of the year 2004 to illustrate changes in snow cover and vegetation.

I got so wee weed and I almost to tears, I’m not going to make it to 22 April, the wood warped and I ripped through, I went too deep and ruined it, good thing it didn’t touch table and smoke the motors and burn down the whole garage. I gathered myself and redid it. Broken wooden world map.
Today I’m going to present to you my 22 hours’ worth of machine work with a Badog artisan CNC, thanks to my friend André who let me use everything, from his awesome kit to his garage to his cold beers . It took me 3 weeks to finish completely the NASA world map , I transformed the image into a heightmap with BMP2CNC software, then engraved the piece of wood, balsa wood. I used 2 tools one for rough and one for fin: rough was 10mm flat and the fine was a 3mm tapered ball mill. Rough took to 6 hours and fine took to 16 hours, with a 4.5kw Badog head. This is the best work I’ve ever done, dedicated to earth. I thought I share it with you although I didn’t make it to the deadline.

what a cool guy and what a masterpiece!! would you buy it?and how much would you price it? I'll leave you with the awesome images.

 

 

[AstroDave]

Very cool thanks for posting. just entered the cnc world so this is great inspiration.

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[Andy Wright]

that is cool. I've been thinking about a CNC machine, but on the fence on whether or not to make the investment. My next majortool purchase will either be a CNC or a TIG welder and this helps me see what can be done with the CNC  

[Chestnut]

23 minutes ago, Andy Wright said:

that is cool. I've been thinking about a CNC machine, but on the fence on whether or not to make the investment. My next majortool purchase will either be a CNC or a TIG welder and this helps me see what can be done with the CNC  

Get the tig, I find myself often wishing i had a welder. I feel like a CNC is just going to be fiddling around on a computer for hours and hours in a drafting program which sounds dreadful, mostly because that's what i do for work 10 hours a day.

[Andy Wright]

1 hour ago, Chestnut said:

Get the tig, I find myself often wishing i had a welder. I feel like a CNC is just going to be fiddling around on a computer for hours and hours in a drafting program which sounds dreadful, mostly because that's what i do for work 10 hours a day.

I have a cheap MIG welder, but it usually just pisses me off when I use it.

I am looking at this welder that can do TIG, MIG, or stick. Its about $1500 for the full setup ($999 for base model which includes MIG and ~$500 to add TIG gun and foot pedal)

http://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us/equipment/Pages/product.aspx?product=K3963-1%28LincolnElectric%29

 

[bob493]

6 hours ago, Lester Burnham said:

It's cool, I guess. It'd be a lot cooler, IMO, if the guy actually carved it or something. CNC stuff is just printing to some really thick paper to me. Credit for sure if you designed whatever you're printing though.

Its simply another tool. Some people would feel the same about your table saw.

[Andy Wright]

26 minutes ago, bob493 said:

Its simply another tool. Some people would feel the same about your table saw.

I agree with you that CNC is just another tool and no more of a "cheat" than using a jointer instead of a hand plane, a domino instead of a traditional mortise, or a dovetail jig instead of cutting them by hand

[bob493]

All you see is the CNC running on its own. What you don't see is the craftsmanship behind the design and many many many hours of work programming it to run that specific function.

 

The beauty of CNC is repeatability though. He could literally make another map like that in as little as carving time of the machine. Doing that by hand will be near impossible.

[RichardA]

The only wood craftsmanship, is putting the wood in the correct place on the machine. It's a robot! Nothing more!

[Guest]

If he laminated boards such that the carving revealed a 3d topographical surface of multiple colors that would be cool.  For example, a very white wood like holly or maple for the oceans and mountain tops and shades of brown/red in between.  At least then it combines old school craftsman ship with technology.

I have respect for computer design and manufacturing - just not a lot of interest in it.  

[bob493]

16 minutes ago, RichardA said:

The only wood craftsmanship, is putting the wood in the correct place on the machine. It's a robot! Nothing more!

Correct me if Im wrong, but thats ALL wood working tools.

[RichardA]

  Consider yourself corrected!  Real woodworkers use their hands, wood gets moved, tools are hand directed to do what the woodworkers wants the tool to do, wood workers of any level are not "robots" ! If for some reason you consider yourself a "woodworker" that's up to you... But to a woodworker, you are nothing more than a programmer, you have no sense of what the wood is, where it came from, how it evolved into the piece that even you robotically make. Your only interest in the wood is how "cool" you can get your robot to make it look... There is no sense of caring in what you do except for your caring about getting your programming right.  You do not qualify as a wood worker in any sense of the word!  You stand corrected!

[shaneymack]

  Consider yourself corrected!  Real woodworkers use their hands, wood gets moved, tools are hand directed to do what the woodworkers wants the tool to do, wood workers of any level are not "robots" ! If for some reason you consider yourself a "woodworker" that's up to you... But to a woodworker, you are nothing more than a programmer, you have no sense of what the wood is, where it came from, how it evolved into the piece that even you robotically make. Your only interest in the wood is how "cool" you can get your robot to make it look... There is no sense of caring in what you do except for your caring about getting your programming right.  You do not qualify as a wood worker in any sense of the word!  You stand corrected!

Preach it !!

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[Andy Wright]

2 hours ago, RichardA said:

  Consider yourself corrected!  Real woodworkers use their hands, wood gets moved, tools are hand directed to do what the woodworkers wants the tool to do, wood workers of any level are not "robots" ! If for some reason you consider yourself a "woodworker" that's up to you... But to a woodworker, you are nothing more than a programmer, you have no sense of what the wood is, where it came from, how it evolved into the piece that even you robotically make. Your only interest in the wood is how "cool" you can get your robot to make it look... There is no sense of caring in what you do except for your caring about getting your programming right.  You do not qualify as a wood worker in any sense of the word!  You stand corrected!

You clearly have a lot of passion for this subject. I personally think a CNC could be useful for making individual pieces, accents, and jigs that would be used with other woodworking skills to build larger projects. I would have no interest in plugging in a CNC and watching it cut out IKEA style furniture. Even if you were making solid wood furniture on a CNC you would still need perfectly straight, flat, and square stock to feed into the machine which is about half of the work in most of my projects.

As an example of how I would use a CNC, if I were making 6 of these chairs for a dining room set I think it would be a handy tool to carve the chair backs (and there would still be plenty of challenge left for me if someone handed me the carved chair backs and told me to build the rest of the chair).

[RichardA]

    I've lost interest in this disagreement.  You can call yourself whatever you want.  I love wood, I love the way it feels, the way it reacts to what I do with it, the way I can guess how it's going to react this year, and the next 20 years. It's an emotional thing for me. That's not possible for you, your emotions are tied up in your programing.  No matter how you cut it or call it, what you do is no better than Ikea, no emotion for the finished product, nor the ability to say to yourself "I did that".. your robot did that any way you cut it!  For this thread I'm no longer going to respond.  Enjoy your cyber world!

[h3nry]

Once upon a time the only way lifeforms on earth could do woodwork was by gnawing with their teeth like a beaver.

But when humans evolved we wanted so much woodwork that our teeth got tired, so we out-sourced the tooth-work to hand tools. But our arms still had to power the tools.

Eventually our appetite for woodwork became so much that our arms got tired, and we out-sourced the arm-work to power tools. But we still need to use our manual skills to operate the machines and tools.

When demand for this fine woodwork got so great that our manual skills couldn't keep up, we out-sourced these manual skills to computers. But we still needed to use our artistic talents to give the computers a design to cut.

Once modern artists finally lost the plot and started exhibiting urinals and unmade beds, we developed machine-learning algorithms that could create new artworks in the style of Rembrandt - and removed all human artistry from the operation too. Now all the woodworker had to do was to broker a deal between customer and product.

Even that was inefficient, so now we have robots that cut the trees down, turn them into furniture, sit on it until it breaks, and tip it in the landfill without having to involve us humans at all. And all we have to do is sit back and watch the bottom line of the balance sheet grow.

How far back into the past should I send my Terminator to stop this dystopian vision from coming true?

 

As a piece of artwork I think the original piece that started this thread is awesome - you could just hang it on the wall and be happy with it. But as a piece of woodwork it could be a whole lot more awesome if it was built into a cabinet or something as a decorative panel or door. Not everyone wants to spend the time to learn how to do intricate carving, or to spend the time to execute it. Why is out-sourcing a skill you don't have and don't want to learn such a bad thing? When I want to add decorative brass hardware onto a project ... I just buy it, I don't try to make it. How is that so different?

We all choose how much of the work we do the hard way, and how much we out-source to other people or machines - if your primary goal is the product then it will probably involve more machines and bought parts - if your primary goal is the journey then you might spend a lot of time growing trees and building tools. Most of us here are somewhere in between - and as long as we produce work we are proud of that's all that matters.

 

ok. Now I'm going down to the shop to chew on a piece of wood like a rodent.

 

[wtnhighlander]

All you see is the CNC running on its own. What you don't see is the craftsmanship behind the design and many many many hours of work programming it to run that specific function.

 

The beauty of CNC is repeatability though. He could literally make another map like that in as little as carving time of the machine. Doing that by hand will be near impossible.

Doing it by hand is what raises the value. Anything that enables mass duplication inherently reduces the value of the individual piece.

I'm not against anyone using a CNC tool, but personally, I prefer making things with my hands. No 2 parts are exactly alike.

[bob493]

6 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

Doing it by hand is what raises the value. Anything that enables mass duplication inherently reduces the value of the individual piece.

I'm not against anyone using a CNC tool, but personally, I prefer making things with my hands. No 2 parts are exactly alike.

I don't disagree, at least not entirely.

 

Given the choice for practicality, most people would choose precision over.... "charm". Repeatability of intricate designs with precision on a scale humans can't do is the real appeal of cnc. I don't care how great of a craftsman someone is, they simply can not match a CNC. To some that is sterile. I say it depends on the piece.

 

  I do get a bit annoyed when the elitist crowd comes out and preaches what "is" and "isn't" acceptable wood working. Usually those arguments end in some circular logic temper tantrum that no one benefits from.

 

 

[asselin22]

I respect the woodworkers who use their hands (although they use tools) and I think that they need to be open minded for the CNC, nobody should be superior, CNC machine will not do the work on it's own, it needs skills, just like the hand worker the tools will not do the work itselves. For exemple the statue of David wasn't carved out of a mountain and that there are done operations that can be done for handworkers that doesn't interfere with their craft.

[AstroDave]

I just recently sold several pieces of my woodworking tools in order to purchase a CNC. It will compliment what I enjoy doing and to my view that's all that concerns me. One of the reasons I haven't been more vocal about making this move to a more CNC oriented work flow is that I expected some level of ostracizing to occur.

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[wtnhighlander]

One other reason that I don't want to use a CNC tool myself is that I work in front of a computer most of the day at my paying job. The last thing I want to do in my 'relaxing hobby' time is to work in front of a computer. I rarely even use Sketchup to model my projects, for the same reason.

More power to those of you doing CNC! It just ain't for me.

[asselin22]

21 hours ago, Andy Wright said:

that is cool. I've been thinking about a CNC machine, but on the fence on whether or not to make the investment. My next majortool purchase will either be a CNC or a TIG welder and this helps me see what can be done with the CNC  

CNC all the way, the things that you can do many things with it from cutting to carving, you can even earn money easily with it, you will enjoy making awesome stuff with it, especially in wood. you even can make other tools and machines for the shop with it.

[asselin22]

23 hours ago, SplinteredDave said:

Very cool thanks for posting. just entered the cnc world so this is great inspiration.

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thanks, I'm glad that you're inspired, the CNC world is awesome with lots of things to do and learn, it's not that hard, you just need to work smart and it will pay off for sure.

[Mick S]

13 hours ago, RichardA said:

  Consider yourself corrected!  Real woodworkers use their hands, wood gets moved, tools are hand directed to do what the woodworkers wants the tool to do, wood workers of any level are not "robots" ! If for some reason you consider yourself a "woodworker" that's up to you... But to a woodworker, you are nothing more than a programmer, you have no sense of what the wood is, where it came from, how it evolved into the piece that even you robotically make. Your only interest in the wood is how "cool" you can get your robot to make it look... There is no sense of caring in what you do except for your caring about getting your programming right.  You do not qualify as a wood worker in any sense of the word!  You stand corrected!

Wow. I've heard both sides of this argument ad nauseam, but rarely in such an insulting manner.

[Guest]

Like I said before, I don't hold anything against CNC but so far I haven't seen it used in a revolutionary way.   I'd love to see it combined with traditional woodworking to build something that could not be done with either alone.... a true 1 + 1 = 3.  I am sure someone is doing that, I just haven't seen it.  Until that happens it is just a productivity tool or toy.