We all remember as kids, using a magnifying glass to burn lines into wooden picnic tables, and boards. Some of you might have even been evil little b#$^&s who incinerated ants fur fun.
![Crying or Very Sad :cry:](./images/smilies/icon_cry.gif)
With the advent of CNC, I am really wondering if it is possible to BURN a nice, detailed design into a sheet of birch plywood for example, using only the PlasmaCam table, and the SUN.
Assuming the sun is directly over the table, and a magnifying glass is mounted to the backing plate in place of a plasma torch, it SHOULD work rather well. You would determine the height of the magnifying glass over the material for the hottest focal point. That would be your cut height. Since the table has two inches of Z, you could simply start and stop the burn by raising or lowering the Z, which would throw the burn point out of focus and the heat would effectively be turned off.
The issue is the position of the sun. This is why I BELIEVE the table would need to be mounted to a solar tracking device, much like those that keep the solar panels pointed directly at the sun all day. I THINK the gantry and carriage would still be able to move around on the table frame, even though it was at an angle.
Imagine a very detailed old west design, with the ranch, and the cows, and the horses and cowboys ... You bring the table out on a sunny day with no clouds, position it so the tracker can follow the arc of the sun, and start the process.
The GREAT thing about using a CNC table for this, is ... you can get very thin black lines with a magnifying glass, or you can raise or lower the lens ever so slightly, to create a wider line that is lighter brown. The cnc table could control the height of the lens over the material AND the X/Y speed with precision not possible with the human hand.
It would be nice if PlasmaCam would add a feature to control the cut speed of each individual path, or even increase or decrease the speed of the cut along a given path. WOW! That would sure make this experiment awesome!
I truly believe this would open up a whole new world of pyrographic art. The wood burning we did as kids, but with computer precision.
If I was only 24 instead of 64 ... what I wouldn't do!
Joe
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