Rhino and the CNC Router: Initial File Work

So I ended up going with idea #3 because I really liked the animal bowls. Most of the artwork I do with usually drawing cartoons of some sort so this fit right in. I thought they would be fun to give as gifts if they turn out well. I decided to illustrate this part by showing the photoshop drawings I made with the parts meant to be cut out filled with green.

As you can see I ended up with six designs, I made the five of them and simply really enjoyed the bear that someone else made so I recreated it but changed up the hands and feet a bit.

I drew these designs in Photoshop as that’s the easiest and quickest software for me. This gave me a good idea of what they would look like eventually. I then brought each photo into illustrator, and simply did a live line trace and expanded that like we did with previous projects.

Here is the vector file I made for it in illustrator. It’s hard to read as I made it all one file that you can easily hide the other animals on. I didn’t have any trouble with this or have to refer to any of the videos, so it all went relatively smoothly. It was simply time-consuming for each one. The part they took the longest was probably just coming up with the ideas for what they would look like.

I then went out and bought my wood for the items to be cut on. I think a good depth would be .75 inches but I am not an expert and the wood is only 1 inch thick so I’m open to anything that would work. These will be pocket cuts as well to make them little bowl critters. Preferably it would use the tool that would give it a bit more of a rounded/beveled edge, but again some of the areas are tight so I am happy to use whatever works.

Here is my fixed file with the proper lines.