Gizmodo: carving

Truly Scare Neighbour Kids with CNC-Carved Geek-o-Lantern

Kit Eaton — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 06:19:00 EDT

With just one day to go, the novelty Halloween pumpkins have been slowly building up: but I say none of them, none, have the scariness factor of this. It's a geek head pumpkin, geekily precision-carved using a geekily cool open-source DIY CNC machine into a genuine geek pumpkin. OK, so the last part is a lie, but the rest is real: check out the video of the carving in action. It's like a mini babyfood maker colliding with high-tech electronics.

The process basically involved converting a photograph into a grayscale image and thence to a depth-map g-code image, compatible with Lumenlab's open-source CNC mill. One suitably flatish and carefully positioned pumpkin, 20 minutes of drilling action later, a little air-spraying to push out the milled pumpkin pulp and voila: geek-o-lanterns.

Much more likely to put the wind up visiting kids than naff old triangular eyes. [Lumenlab via Hackaday]

Steve Jobs Jack-O-Lantern Only Moderately Scary to Neighborhood Children

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 12:15:00 EDT

Halloween's getting closer, and you know what that means: novelty pumpkin carving! The Joy of Tech has provided a nice little template of Steve Jobs' face so you can have your own little Steve head in your front lawn this October 31st. Ryan from Seattle did an admirable job with the instructions, but even with Apple's new aluminum aesthetic I can't help but wish he had used one of those all-white pumpkins. Update: reader Scott Heimendinger isn't about to let the Jobs-O-Lantern go unanswered. His creation after the jump.

[iPhone Savior]

DIY Robot Does 3D Carving: Self-Replication Still Far-Off

Kit Eaton — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:30:00 EDT

Robots robots robots... from sexy ones to fighting ones, we love them here at Giz. But this amazing project by Matt Denton over at Robosavvy has me in two minds. It's a modified DIY hexapod robot with a motorised Dremel-tool nose, and Matt's written some code that lets the robot move the cutting tool with precision, so it acts like a little precision CNC mill. And it's amazing: wait til you see the video of it in action, carving out a model. But is this project a scary step towards self-replicating 'bots?

Matt's achieved such precision in such a short time of working on this project, I can't help but wonder about it. Look at that robotic femur—it's just polystyrene, but surely this is step one on the road to metal-cutting self-replicating robots? The thought of one of these, armed with that eerie-sounding cutting tool, advancing across the floor towards me is a real heebie-jeebie inducer...

Just kidding, of course. As long as it doesn't choose to remodel anyone's face with that Dremel cutter, it's a pretty cool project. [Project page via Robosavvy —Thanks Limor]

25 Best Geek-o'-Lanterns in the World

Charlie White — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 08:38:58 EDT

It's that time of year again, and we're getting shivers down our spines just thinking about it: Halloween, the time of harvest, parties, carving gourds and getting drunk out of your gourd. And some of that gourd carving must have been done with the assistance of high technology, especially that one with Jack Nicholson from his role in The Shining. Did they use a projector? Special knives? An auto-carving machine? Add that to all the other most exquisitely created jack-o'-lanterns we could find, some of which are classics you may have seen in years gone by, and some entirely new. Our favorite? That Jack Nicholson-o'-lantern has our jaws agape. Let us know which one is your favorite, and please, don't everyone pick the goatse one. [MMOABC]
Gallery updated! Now with even more geekitude!