Milling on a Curved Surface

[anonymous]

Milling on a curved surface.
I'm very new to CnC, I've only dabbled on flat surfaces.
I've got a personal project I want to try, carving onto a curved object.... It's only curved on one plane as crudely shown in the pictures, the white paper representing a straight line.
Short of getting the item 3D scanned, are there any tricks to getting the actual curves importef into V carve pro?
Our mill uses a Masso system, so I'm curious if a person could probe the part on the machine bed 1st and work backwards into V carve?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated, I've tried to search the topic, but most trails lead to 3D modeling, and I don't have Aspire or any other programs currently, but open to any suggestions.
Thanks in advance. Gerry

 

[SignTorch]

if the part is 2" wide, the yellow arc is about 1.5" wide, and a lot depends on how wide of an area you want to mill to what depth.

a) Without knowing approximate size of part and size of milling area and desired depth of milling its a guessing game. And the photo is crooked. If I had the information and a straight photo then I could literally measure the curvature on screen and judge the milling depth variation to draw a definitive conclusion.

b) It looks to me like, if that part is 2" wide and you're milling across 1" then the depth variation is about .03" and you could probably ignore that and mill flat provided you mount that area of the part flat.

c) Maybe divide the logo and text into two sections and mount and mill each section separately to reduce flat depth variation across each section if necessary.

d) The curvature looks very close to a radial arc so that probing and precision depth mapping should not be necessary. Just calculate the arc.

To be more scientific: (if paragraph b above is not possible)

1) Figure out how you want to mount the part on the machine and area on the part where the milling will be.

2) Chuck up a dial indicator.

3) Probe height of 3 or 4 points across milling area.

4) Calculate the circular radius of the curve and use that arc to map depth. (probably good enough)

5) Or plot the 3 or 4 points to draw a smooth bezier curve in CAD or vector software and use that. (probably overkill)

6) How to map your gcode onto your depth map for your machine with your software is up to you.