I think I may have figured out the issues I was dealing with. I know it’s late in the game, but I’m just figuring out work offsets. I never bothered to use them before.
Good to hear. I recall a few people say something along the lines of, you don’t learn anything if you don’t fail sometimes.
Now, I’ve just got to figure out if & how people go about painting a 3D cut…if it’s the same as a 2.5D cut. I saw someone on YouTube do an Indian Motorcycles signage in 2.5D where he sprayed the paint on the work piece then covered it with painters tape before he cut it. Then performed the cut and sprayed the cut lettering with black paint. I don’t think that will work with the 3D cuts, because they are not layered.
If you have something that has a fixed lowest depth (lettering for instance), you could mill it first and either spray it in the machine or accurately locate it so you can remove and replace it. Then you could mill other things and either hand paint the rest or mask off parts to spray. I would imagine no matter what, you will be doing some hand painting. You might watch some videos that cover hand painting 3d printed miniatures for some pointers, if high detail is your intent.
If it can mill pub boards shouldn’t it be able to paint?
Sure, you could paint with it. I don’t believe hackaday has featured anyone using their machine to paint their finished works. It would be a “simple” matter of different toolpaths for each color with a tool/color change between each. Probably have to rig up a drip feed to a foam or bristled brush.
You would probably be getting in to the territory where something like LinuxCNC would be required for all of the integrated calculations.