I visited a local artist last sunday and he is restoring a piece of French 18th century furniture for his customer and replicating one for himself. He had the replicated top cut via a small cnc for the detailed inlay work.
Pics:
The last image shows the duplicate top in work.
I’ve used the laser cutters for marquetry work. The cabinet for my Polynesia pinball game is done this way.
Using vBits, you can do some pretty amazing inlay work easily. Basically, you cut a posiitive image, a negative image, leave a little room for glue, press the negative into the positive, then sand off the extruded bit. It leaves a perfectly fitted inlay.
This is the coolest thing ever, and I’m suddenly interested in doing woodworking and shapeoko stuff.
Just to clarify marquetry and inlay are two different techniques. Inlay uses moderately thick (>= 1/8") pieces of wood, while marquetry uses very thin veneers of wood (< 1/16"). In my opinion, a milling machine like the shapeoko will not do marquetry since it would likely tear and crack the thin wood, but as tapper says, if you compensate for the kerf of the cuts you can do inlay successfully if the Shapeko can hold tolerances.
I agree with Paul that laser would be the best CNC tool we have for marquetry, but talk with him. As I recall he had to do a few tricks to keep the air nozzle from blowing the cut pieces around.
Yes, marquetry does not lend itself to automatic processes well for the very reasons you cite - the machine tends to tear up the inlay,and kerfs are hard to deal with.
That’s the great thing about using vBits to do inlay work - there is no need to spend lots of time compensating for kerf at all, and the pieces fit perfectly. It’s dead easy, once you get the hang of setting the toolpaths up.
Paul,
I asked the artist / furniture conservator about laser cutting - he said the scorched edges won’t work for him especially when dyeing the wood. He hand cuts the individual pieces on a 18th century French marquetry saw he reproduced in his shop.
Now that is what I like to hear! Real, authentic, traditional wood working before the noisy, nasty power tools got in the way.
More of this…
