I make small things from wood and carve real landscapes on a CNC router, using terrain models from TerraPrinter, the map app I build.
The shop is closed until further notice.
Small pieces that fit on a counter, a shelf or a wall, cut on the CNC and finished by hand.
A mountain someone climbed, the lake where the cottage is, the hills they grew up in. TerraPrinter turns a spot on Earth (or the Moon, or Mars) into a 3D model from real elevation data. The CNC carves that model into hardwood, and tinted epoxy fills the water.
Search for it in TerraPrinter and draw a square, circle or hexagon around it.
Set the size and exaggerate the height. 1.5–2× usually reads best in wood. Then export it as an STL.
A roughing pass with a flat end mill clears most of the wood. A finishing pass with a ball-nose bit follows the surface.
The CNC cuts the relief. The lakes get tinted epoxy, and the piece is sanded and oiled by hand.
Pale and tight-grained. Contour lines and shadows show up crisply, which makes it the best choice for detailed mountains.
Every carving starts as code. Capital Coders builds TerraPrinter, which makes the terrain models, and the tools on this page that turn those models into toolpaths.
A free web app that turns any area on a map into a printable 3D terrain model. You pick a place, draw a shape around it, choose which map layers to include, and download the model.
A 3D printer adds material and a CNC takes it away, so the same model needs a different plan. The machine at the top of this page runs a drop-cutter toolpath: at each point, the bit is lowered until any part of it touches the model, so it never cuts too deep.
Roughing uses a ½″ flat end mill. It leaves a little extra wood behind and moves over a little under half its width on each pass. Finishing uses a ¼″ ball nose that follows the surface. The tighter its stepover, the smaller the ridges it leaves between passes.
The machine is built with three.js and cuts a height field of 36,000 points in your browser. It tracks the bit's position the way a CNC controller does: X and Y from the corner of the stock, and Z down from the top surface. The job clock estimates how long the carve would take at a real feed rate.
The landscapes are generated from layered noise with a river valley through them. You can tap "Carve another" for a new one.
I'm Jordan, a software developer in Ottawa. I build TerraPrinter so people can 3D-print the places they love, and Woodmaker is where those places become wood.
Follow along on Instagram for carvings and work in progress.
@woodmaker.ca on Instagram