Putting on the Dog with CAD/CAM

by jdkjewelry3d on November 4, 2008

Here’s a  project I recently did for A Charming Life, a company specializing in one of a kind charms from photos. The customer wanted a charm of their pug, a dog with some rather distinctive features!

From Pug

ArtCAM Jewelsmith makes it relatively easy to produce these designs with CAD/CAM. The first step is to import the photo. Transferring from 2D to 3D requires some hands-on digital sculpting. The program initially produces a height-field relief based on light and dark tones, producing a rough, flat relief.

From Pug

To add more shape to the relief, vector lines are draw around the areas to be raised and sculpted. The closed vectors are filled with color.

From Pug

Using the relief editor and sculpting tools in ArtCAM, shape is given to areas designated with color. Separating by color allows you to work on one area without disturbing another.

From Pug

Detail was added with the sculpting tools on the furrows of the brows, cheeks and forehead. By masking off areas with color, the background was made flat and the border raised.

From Pug

I took some artistic liberty to create a neck that would work better for a round charm. Working under the purple area, the neck was sculpted to look like fur.

From Pug

The grayscale height-field image shows the contrast between different depths.

Finally, a rendering is shown to the customer for approval.

From Pug

The CAD design is then processed with the toolpathing module of ArtCAM (CAM) and a wax was cut on my ModelMaster CNC 1000. My machine 11 years old and still running strong!

Then the wax is cast, finished and polished. The finished piece is 25 mm in diameter by 2.5 mm thick.

From Pug

In retrospect, I could have done more to smooth the relief but I thought that the roughness of the texture would be passed over by the toolpathing program since it seemed to be too fine to be cut by the tip of the tool which had a 0.040 mm tip radius.

From Pug

Using a larger tool would have made that strategy much more effective. Having the option of producing such fine detail is a good thing, but it has to be used judiciously!

Here’s another charm that I thought turned out better because I took more time to sculpt the details and smooth the texture before running the toolpath.

From Pug

-Jesse

jdkjewelry3d

jdkjewelry3d

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