Map to Her Heart

We have had our wedding anniversary recently, so I thought of a gift for my wife. During research I mentioned "Maps Contest" and came up with the Idea that I would like to share with you.

It should be a fast project that I can do without her taking notice of. Also it should be doable in a few hours.

A slab of wood at least 25x25cm, thickness irrelevant

Tools:

• CNC
• Carving bit 0,1mm tip, 30 degrees
• 1mm upcut endmill
• Along enough bit to cut out the shape
• Sanding paper

There are many ideas when using Google, but since we don't live in fancy towns with fancy roads, I chose to digitalize the route between our hometowns.

Also I noted some remarkable moments we had in the past, I wanted to integrate in the path.

All shall fit into a heart shaped form and be kind of decorative.

I searched fitting Icons for the remarkable moments in Google and used Inkscape to create paths out of the free available icons.

Example:
I first took notice of her during a sports event (football match) many years ago, and later we met again on an event where she sold Tarte flambée. After that we dated and so on...

That is why I took a football and an fitting image of a Tarte flambée. I guess you get the point.

Copy the Image to Inkscape, and select the "trace bitmap" functionality.
Then choose the best options, in my case "brightness cutoff" worked the best since most icons are black and white.

I continued until I had all the icons converted to vector graphics.

This is kind of easy, at least the way I did it, but I guess there are even better options to choose from.

Also it is possible to do more like a topographical design, but since the map was kind of large, it would have taken too long to carve and these kind of maps do look best when there are more mountains than in the area where we are from.

I just set up the route in Google maps and took a Screenshot.
I copied the resulting image to Inkscape and just redraw the route by hand using "draw freehand line" function.
The resulting line then can be used without further adjustment.

If you want to do something similar and the streets in your country are more straight, you can use "draw bezier curves" also.

I began by inserting a heart with the wanted size in Inkscape.
That heart was also converted to a vector graphic by using the redraw feature.
Then I arranged the redrawn path in the heart shaped graphic and sorted the icons of the remarkable moments on the path.

Since I don't wanted to end the path there I draw two lines at the beginning and added a further line "to eternity".

Also I added a nice "saying" which means: "the most beautiful memories are collected in pairs".

I use Estlcam for setting up the machine paths since I do not know how to do that in Fusion 360 (I'm still learning).

I chose the path and the beginning and endpoints to be milled with a 1mm end I'll and used a 0.1mm 30 degree engraving bit for the icons and the text.

The path, the endpoints and the text are 2mm deep, the icons only 1mm.
If the icons are milled too deep, the small details will get lost. keep that in mind, 1mm is deep enough.

The Heart will be cut out using a 6x32mm endmill, but that could also be done by using a bandsaw or something.

If you are using planed clean wood, you can skip this step.

Due to the fact that my wood had some wormholes, I first had to make sure how to get rid of possible "leftovers" in it.

For such tasks, I use an old Pizza Stove, to heat the wood up to 100 degrees for at least two hours.

After that treatment, it is possible that the wood is bent even more than before, so heating must be done at first.

After the wood cooled down, I used my 32mm end mill to flatten the upper side of the wood.
I usually do that manually by moving the CNC with the control buttons.

The wood must be clamped down in a way that no clamp is in the way of the end mill.
To achieve that, I drilled a screw in each corner of the wood an used them as mounting points for the clamps.

With a feed rate of around 2000mm/min and a depth of 1mm per pass, I achieved the best result.
Also it works best to only do synchronous milling and to mill row by row.
In my case I flattened the top and directly started with engraving.
The bottom side was flattened afterwards.

I began with the 1mm end mill and later switched to the engraving bit.
After changing the end mill I just had to reset Z0 with my diy tool length sensor.

Once the engraving was done, I used the 6x32mm end mill to mill 27mm deep around the outline of the heart.

If you use already planed wood, you Can mill all the way through and start with the next step.

As last step, I turned the wood around and startet flattening the bottom.

After about 5mm of removed material, I was able to see the hearts shape come through and the wood had no uneven spot anymore. I just finished the flattening and could start finishing the Parts.

Now all that is left to do, was to finish the part (s).
I first used 80 grid Sanding paper to remove some marks from milling process.

Later I used 220 grid to get a smooth finish.
It worked out best to use pliers to remove the excess material that is possibly left in the path.
Also a folded piece of Sanding paper can be used to smoothen the path.

Now you can think of coloring the map, in my case I liked the wood, so I decided to leave it plain.

The Heart found its place on our sweden stove in the living room, the outer part beautifies the guest bathroom.

Feel free to build your own version, and if you like, share a picture:-)