New CNC Cut : Anchorage To Talkeetna
When I was at our family’s cabin in the Talkeetna (Alaska) area last, my father gave me some birch from our property he’d felled, milled, and planed. I brought that back to CA, and for the longest time have been thinking what to cut on it.
Realized it would make a great Christmas gift to give it back to them with some art.
As a test piece, since I’d never used this wood before, I turned some clouds from the SW corner of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot into a height map, and cut that. It took 9 hours with rough + finish, mainly because of all the height variation and the 1/8″ tapered ballnose I used for the finish:
Armed with that test success, I moved onto my next piece.
Using terrain2stl, I captured the terrain between my hometown (Anchorage) and the region our cabin is at (Talkeetna). I cleaned this up in Autodesk Maya, added the text, and send this to MeshCAM where I generated the toolpath for my X-Carve CNC:
After a combined 6 hours for the rough, finish (both with a 3-flute upcut .25″ ballnose endmill), and pencil cleanup (on the text, with 1/8″ tapered 2-flute upcut ballnose) passes I did some sanding, stained it, then applied the paint for Cook Inlet, and the major rivers in the area. Measure over a foot wide, and around 30″ tall.
Turned out beautiful, and I look forward to seeing it at our cabin next time I’m up there.