How to Make a Woodcut From... a Photo of a Woodcut Using Your CNC Mill

My dad was just visiting, and he asked me if I could use my new CNC router to make a woodcut. That got me to thinking... sure, why not?

He sent me a photo of a woodcut hanging in my sister's house, and in a few hours I was able to make this woodcut! Very neat.

Unfortunately, this instructable uses the incredibly awesome, and extremely non-free Vectric Aspire software.

Stuff you'll need:

a CNC mill/router
a 90 degree V router bit
a photo
a hunk of MDF or other flat wood
a buddy with Vectric Aspire or something similar. Somebody let me know if there is some free software that will do this!

Step 1: Crop Your Photo and Invert

Open your original photo, crop it, and reverse black & white. I re sized it to 500 pixels wide. This helps reduce the size of the traced image.

Step 2: Import Into Aspire

Open a new document in Aspire, set the document size to the size you like.

Then, import the photo.

Step 3: Fit Vectors to Bitmap

This is pretty simple -- just click the Fit vectors to bitmap button. Choose 'Black and White', and slide the slider around until it looks good. When happy, click 'Fit Vectors'.

I like to delete the original bitmap so I can see the vectors more clearly.

Step 4: Create Your Toolpath

Choose Toolpaths->Create V-Carve/Engraving toolpath.

Select a V shaped bit, select all your vectors, and 'calculate'.

Then you can do a 3-D preview.

That's pretty much it! Export your g-code and carve.

Like I said, Vectric is pretty awesome.