Time for Carvey!

"Storing Honey" Ormond MacDougald, Ph.D., John A. Faulkner Collegiate Professor of Molecular & Integrative Physiology, Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School. Copyright BioArtography.

This week, in addition to finessing the vector files for laser cutting (more on that later), I bought a linoleum block to digitally carve using a machine in the Duderstadt Fabrication Studio called Carvey by Inventables. Files are created in their web-based proprietary software, Easel. As opposed to a multi-layer/color stencil, this block print is for one color only. I started with the original BioArt image (left) and refined the image in Photoshop, bumping up the contrast (below).

Then, I imported a black and white version of the image into Easel and "Traced" it which converted it into a vector file (below).

Within Easel, I can choose how to carve the shapes- an outline or fully remove the negative spaces, and control the depth of the cut of each gray shape. The pink bars on the left indicate the real estate the clamp in the machine will take up. Next time, I'll plan for that area, but for this test, I simply removed the areas affected. The program asks for what material I'm cutting to help determine depth. For this test, I used a 5" x 7" linoleum block that's 7/8" thick overall. The lino is around 1/8" thick. After clicking through several check screens, I hit "carve" and quickly learned it was carving too deep and paused the machine to adjust the depth. The screen shot below shows a 3D view of of the file. The blue areas show what is being cut and the red lines indicate the path of the tool. The actual mechanism is a lot like a computerized dremel with a 1/8" drill bit for this project that scoops and pulls the garbage up and away.

Next time, using this same material, I'll even make the depth shallower, closer to 1/8," as once the block was completed, the two first areas that carved too deep wrecked the integrity of the block overall and the corner of the lino peeled up.

What a mess! Though, it's quite satisfying to fire up the shop vac and suck up all the shavings to reveal the finished block. The total carving time was around 25 minutes. There is no way I could have accurately cut this amount of detail by hand.