CNC Halftones

[kevin]

Does anyone out there do halftones?  I'd like suggestions on what software (preferably open source) gives the best results.   

[aforww]

I'm just getting into this. What are half tones lol.

[Derek the Admin]

Welcome to the forum!

Aforww: I don't have an official definition, but it is essentially an image created with a CNC machine by creating a series of pixels in a pattern that when viewed from far enough away looks like an image. Normally you paint the surface a contrasting color then use a CNC machine to make the dots. You need a set a program to take an image and generate the half tone tool paths. On a machine like the MillRight CNC M3, you need to use a pretty small bit to get enough pixels in to make a good image.

Kevin:

Check out the below website. Look for the Halftoner program. He also has a couple other cool programs, like his reactor program that does similar work to his halftone program.

jasondorie.com/page_cnc.html

[kevin]

Aforww, I am glad the administrator saw your post and responded to it before I did. He did a much better job than I would have in describing what a halftone is.   Go to YouTube and do a search for "halftones".  They are pretty cool and just one more example of how diverse these machines are.   

[kevin]

Admin, Thanks for the Jason Dorie website. It has some great open source downloads that should help me out in my quest to do some halftones. There's also a video on the site showing a process called Diffusion that looks pretty cool too.   

[aforww]

Awesome thanks for that. That sounds like an interesting project I may have to try that.

[kb9jlo]

Aug 6, 2016 17:28:23 GMT Derek the Admin said:

Welcome to the forum!

Aforww: I don't have an official definition, but it is essentially an image created with a CNC machine by creating a series of pixels in a pattern that when viewed from far enough away looks like an image. Normally you paint the surface a contrasting color then use a CNC machine to make the dots. You need a set a program to take an image and generate the half tone tool paths. On a machine like the MillRight CNC M3, you need to use a pretty small bit to get enough pixels in to make a good image.

Kevin:

Check out the below website. Look for the Halftoner program. He also has a couple other cool programs, like his reactor program that does similar work to his halftone program.

jasondorie.com/page_cnc.html

That looks cool. I see though it is very 'dated' - 2011. As with all things Internet might need to grab it now. 
Before it disappears.

Uh-oh. Looks like Artcam was acquired by Autodesk (told you they have grown mostly by acquisition!). www.artcam.com/
I'll have to look around there were lots of programs that would take grayscale images and develop 3D G-code... That was a long time ago, I admit.

[Derek the Admin]

Take a look at this link Dan:

www.scorchworks.com/Dmap2gcode/dmap2gcode.html

Scorchworks has some other cool things too. It is worth browsing there a bit.