Halloween Pumpkin Carving With CNC Robotics

An anonymous reader writes "A guy at Lumenlab has created a way to carve his face on a pumpkin using his DIY CNC gantry robot. I think this demonstration says a lot about the future ubiquity of the technology. I'm really looking forward to the day that I have one of these machines in my garage."

Re:Whoa!

[tritonman]

That pumpkin is an abomination! It represents all that is wrong with the world taken over by robots, so much for the sanctity of halloween! I'm sure this one will make the baby jesus cry, when he created halloween, this is NOT what he had in mind!

Re:Whoa!

[popmaker]

Jesus did not create halloween, and you must not anger the halloween spirits, or this will happen: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/in_the_know_has_halloween_become [theonion.com]

Re:

[AlexBirch]

You insensitive clod, Jesus created everything. Halloween, Buddha, Mohammedan, etc...

Get your facts straight!

[Locke2005]

Hollowe'en wasn't created by :"Baby Jesus"! It was created by "I've returned from the dead and boy am I pissed" Zombie Jesus!"

Re:

[spitek]

LEAVE OUR HOLIDAY's alone and well leave yours alone crazy freak!

Holy Crap!

[Capt James McCarthy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Fine_(actor) [wikipedia.org]

This is really obligatory!

[cosmocain]

Take this! [zoy.org]

Very cool

[shad0wfire1]

These Guys have upgraded a hell of a lot since I first purchased the projector kit from them. Loved my projector :) New site looks amazing.

Re:

[morgan_greywolf]

Offtopic? Offtopic? No, it's not offtopic. At least mod it correctly: It's either A) Funny or B) Troll. And damn, why do the mods have no sense of humor today?

nice pumpkin, but

[v1]

I think I like the /. article pumpkin [slashdot.org] better. I can't imagine how you'd carve that thing... I mean, even the spikes... how? incredible.

Re:

[Clarious]

I think I like the /. article pumpkin [slashdot.org] better. I can't imagine how you'd carve that thing... I mean, even the spikes... how? incredible.

If you RTFA, then you will know that is not the pumpkin he carved, he used CNC machine to carve his face on a pumpkin, not a demonic face. It is still incredible though

Re:

[alx5000]

Well, and if you cared to read the comment you just replied to, you may find out that he already knows, and that he still likes the one samzenpus used better.

And it's not demonic, FFS, it's a predator!

Re:

[svnt]

Whoa whoa whoa I have to stop you.

"a demonic face"

A?! demonic face [wikipedia.org]?!

GTFO. Seriously. Try again tomorrow.

Re:

[cool_arrow]

I don't think the spikes are carved. They are likely something like colored toothpicks stuck in after the cnc is done.

Re:

[cool_arrow]

nvm. they're different sizes. Carved maybe but not w/ cnc.

DOOOM

[coleblak]

Christ, I had a Doom flashback. It's too early in the morning for a pic like that. Nonetheles, AWESOME!

Wrong picture... taken from here

[bryansj]

This guy was on Food Network and won the pumpkin carving challenge. The Predator pumpkin shown was stolen from his site. http://www.villafanestudios.com/pumpkins.htm [villafanestudios.com]

Re:Wrong picture... taken from here

[HEbGb]

Exactly. The CNC methods are fun and all, but it's really offensive to have a solid, hand-carved artwork misattributed like that. The photo should be removed.

Re:

[eonlabs]

If the second pic was properly attributed to the site it came from I don't think it matters, but since it isn't, it either should be or be removed.

Seconded!

Re:

[swb]

What's worse is that the CNC carved pumpkin is only shown lit up from a distance -- no up close detail or anything. I'd also swear it looks like the lit up CNC carved pumpkin isn't actually a carving but is an image projected onto the pumpkin -- the lighting just doesn't look right, but this is just an impression I don't really have any proof.

Re:

[svnt]

Offensive? To who, pumpkin artists everywhere?

What percentage of the population do you think that is? If we can't afford to offend pumpkin artists we have seriously gone off the deep end.

Re:

[EdIII]

No offense, but your an idiot.

He was not talking about offending a small minority of people, which according to you does not matter since they are a minority. An offensive concept in of itself, I might add.

What he was referring to, of which I agree, is that is offensive to mislead people and attribute one person's work to another regardless of the nature of that work and its popularity.

This is about ethics and professional conduct in journalism.

Re:

[Jrono]

"Ethics" and "professional conduct"? On Slashdot?

You must be new here... :-)

But yeah, I had to browse through the comments to figure out where that picture came from. It's very annoying when things like this aren't properly attributed.

Re:

[PitaBred]

I find it offensive to represent one person's work as someone else's, especially when one is machine-made and another is hand-made.

Silence....I kill you!

[nevillethedevil]

That guy is talented. Wait isn't this [villafanestudios.com] Ahmed the dead terrorist?

Obligatory

[cunniff]

I, for one, welcome our robotic CNC overlords.

hmmm

[thatskinnyguy]

ROGR... is that any relation to the WOPR [wikipedia.org]

His face?

[Joolz50]

...A guy at Lumenlab has created a way to carve his face on a pumpkin ...

Thats his face?

Re:

[mcgrew]

If it is, he's a dead ringer for my ex-wife!

AVP

[circletimessquare]

Alien Pumpkin versus Predator Pumpkin: Whoever Wins, We... get pumpkin pie

Massively misleading article summary and photo

[nmg196]

Just in case it isn't obvious, the photo is NOT related to the article summary and the pumpkin was NOT carved on a CNC machine! This article is massively misleading. The photo was stolen from another site featuring hand-carved pumpkins. I doubt a CNC machine could even vaguely come close to doing that on a material so soft and flexible.

Re:

[mephistophyles]

I think a CNC machine could actually... the main problem would be making sure the pumpkin doesn't move while you're working on it. The teeth would be hard to do, but a 3D CNC machine like certain specialized businesses and technical universities have should be able to make a decent attempt, but since the material is fairly fragile it'll take a while.

whether a material is soft and flexible doesn't mean it can't be CNC'ed, it just means that the bit will have to rotate a lot faster and the movement speed

Re:

[TheGeniusIsOut]

The easiest way to work with soft and fragile materials like a pumpkin would be to deep-freeze it before carving.

Re:

[BLKMGK]

Redundant but here's the site with that pumpkin - featured on DIGG awhile ago which is how I found it -> http://www.villafanestudios.com/pumpkins.htm [villafanestudios.com]

I believe you but ....

[frovingslosh]

You would better support your statement by providing a link to the other site that you say exists. The problem that I have with the article is that he completely ignores the issue of irregular gourd shape, both outside and in. Lots of babble about converting the image to a depth map, but no mention at all of the bigger issue of how to map that to a irregular round surface. I don't believe this was done on this system either, but I find it hard to understand how you could make your claim and not provide a l

Re:

[AlexBirch]

Just in case it isn't obvious, the photo is NOT related to the article summary and the pumpkin was NOT carved on a CNC machine!

OMG Slashdot uses misleading intro to increase their viewership, news at 11.

Nice carving, but ...

[Muad'Dave]

...I'd love to see the same sort of thing done from inside the pumpkin (through a hole in the top), without piercing the outside skin on the side. The pumpkin would look unmolested until you illuminated it from the inside. Wooo!!! Scary!!!

Re:

[smellsofbikes]

There's a famous Charles Addams cartoon that shows a field of pumpkins, with one in the foreground being carved from the inside: just a knife blade sticking out, busily cutting away...
Alas, I can't find a pic online.

Re:

[cool_arrow]

That would be cool. Perhaps cut the pumpkin in half, scrape out the gunk, cnc, and "glue" it back together.

Re:

[RockDoctor]

I can almost hear the flurry of foolish {Insert deity of your choice}-ian people (*) writing to {Insert idiotic excuse for a newspaper in your region} along the lines of "Look at this photo of a pumpkin I brought. It's got an image of [ {Insert deity of choice} OR {Insert angel of choice} OR {Insert demon of choice} OR {Insert politician of choice} ] and therefore proves that [ { ( {deity of choice} exists ) OR ( {politician of choice} is the [spawn of {devil of choice} ] OR [ favoured of {deity of choic

Re:

[Muad'Dave]

In my opinion, that would make it all worthwhile. 8-)

Goat pic?

[Zarniwoop]

Ok... is it just me, or did the smaller pic look like a pumpkin goatse to anyone else?

Oh god... the interwebs, they've rotted my brains.

the pumpkin is cool and all...

[viridari]

...but Lumenlab is a much cooler site to go to in that they produce an affordable mini-CNC mill [lumenlab.com] for $599 that is run by open source software [linuxcnc.org].

Pumpkin Carved with a Laser Cutter

[elkaim]

In my lab at UC Santa Cruz, we used a laser cutter to carve our school logo into a pumpkin. One of the graduate students devised a rolling rig so that the distance to the surface of the pumpkin remained roughly constant, keeping the beam in focus. He made a video of the process seen at the link below.

http://apps.soe.ucsc.edu/elkaim/archives/000333.html [ucsc.edu]

My ex did it by hand...

[malachid69]

<a href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=42797465&albumID=1866729&imageID=1015527"><img src="http://b2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/00502/29/61/502541692_m.jpg" /></a>

Re:

[malachid69]

hmm, well, that's annoying...

Re:

[malachid69]

Actually, that's in my album. I had just hit the copy-code button without really looking at it.