Mammoth Carving!

Let’s make a Mammoth carving using MDF and our awesome small factor industrial CNC router.

The major advantage of having CNCROi.com fulfill all your custom carving needs is that of repeatability and scalability, meaning we can make endless exact duplicates of anything you can imagine carved and also have them at different sizes.

For this Mammoth carving, you’ll see a two step process, the first is using a quarter inch end mill to carve out any big waste material areas to save time with our far smaller and finer 1/8″ ball nose.

For this Mammoth carving job, I used MDF for two reasons at CNCROi.com, the first is because it carves really fast and relatively clean and second, MDF is great with paint, and I planned on having this bronzed to really showcase the relief but also the “age” of the scenery in the picture.

CNCROi.com has also done a lot of custom cabinetry using MDF, overall, it’s a great material for specific applications of which carving is just one of them.

It may be hard to see what’s going on but you can see the big mammoth in the foreground slowly coming to shape, it looks jagged as the focus of the first end mill is massive material removal, not fine details so that the overall mammoth carving process goes as fast as possible.

In this case, the frame will also be carved out of the MDF with some pre-historic imagery, this is a great way to add more customization and personalization to any scenery or imagery that CNCROi.com carved on your behalf onto whatever material you wish.

MDF is a very cost-effective material and available in relatively thick options which also makes it great for custom carving, the consistency means that there is no wood grain patterns that could distract you from looking at the finished Mammoth carving.

CNCROi.com has extensive carving experience, from large live edge house number signs to smaller items that would fit in your mailbox.

You’ll notice that the dust created by our CNC router changes quite dramatically from the quarter inch end mill to 1/8″ ball nose, it goes from chunks or carved rice to fine powder, that’s because there is a very fine step-over process that’s happening to reveal as much detail as possible in the Mammoth carving.

You’ll notice that some of the fine detail is also starting to be revealed in the frame as well, again, detail is free when it comes to CNC equipment on the most part, so if the bit is passing over an area, carving or otherwise, it’s still passing over it so CNCROi.com might as well add details to make the overall piece more interesting.

The 1/8″ ball nose is a very slow process, but the results look spectacular and yes, CNCROi.com also has a 1/16″ ball nose too but for items of this size, the extra detail achieved isn’t worth the tremendous running times.

This certainly isn’t the first elephant I’ve worked with at the shop, from 3D models to door holders, I’ve enjoyed my favorite animal many times creatively.

and 3D kids toy.

There is also an offset all around the Mammoth carving to make separating it from the MDF all the easier and more efficient after CNCROi.com is done the carving process.

The MDF carving process is proceeding wonderfully, it does take time but the advantages over hand carving make it more than worth it.

When it comes to your design options for carving, they are absolutely endless, whatever you want on whatever media you want, CNCROi.com can carve it out and ship it right to your door.

You can now begin to see the background of the Mammoth carving coming into frame, and the details in the picture frame also becoming far more apparent as the higher resolution ball nose works it’s way through.

CNCROi.com has extensive experience with MDF with a variety of tooling in our shop to the ultimate cool effect you are looking for.

Turning off one of the lights at CNCROi.com shows you the relieve in greater detail, again, the paint will have a major transformative effect on the finished Mammoth carving so this is just a hint of what’s to come in the finished piece.

CNCROi.com can also carve whatever you want using any mixture of fonts too, the only real limitation is your imagination and the sizing of the finished piece, meaning the detail can’t be smaller than the diameter of the router bit used.

This Mammoth carving is now finished, you can see how wonderful it carved, there isn’t too many areas that need a little manual attention but those are quickly sanded up as this is MDF.

Separating the carving from the rest of the MDF sheet is pretty straightforward using CNCROi.com‘s awesome bandsaw.

Here’s how I set-up my bandsaw, I really love this tool in the shop.

You can now fully see, after sanding and cleaning-up, how wonderful this Mammoth carving is going to look, it’s off to the paint booth with this awesome job!

And voila, the wonders of paint, this Mammoth carving just looks awesome, it has a rough feel to it, as if it was carved out of sandstone, the lighting bouncing off the relief really helps accentuate this as well.

Taking a closer look, the detail is perfect with the paint and the MDF material, I really enjoy the feel of carvings when you run your fingers over it and can feel the imagery.

Again, the lighting of the Mammoth carving has a huge effect on it, this as a super fun job!

Need custom carving? Contact CNCROi.com right now!