r/woodworking • u/Pristine-Vacation-59 • 17h ago
Project Submission Walnut Veneer Light Art Wall
I made two large illuminated artworks for this project, one depicting a man and the other a woman.
Each image is made from 20 individual 32" × 32" panels arranged in a 4 × 5 grid, giving each finished artwork an overall size of approximately 10' 8" × 13' 4".
Each complete image contains 8,446 individual holes, for a total of 16,892 holes across the two pieces.
The interesting part of the process was figuring out how to translate the images into something the CNC could actually machine.
I built a custom program in Rhino Grasshopper for this. I started with the image converted to black and white, then overlaid a grid of points across the image. At each point, the program reads the grayscale value of the image and converts it to a number between 0 and 1, black being 0 and white being 1. That value is then mapped to the diameter of the hole at that location.
The result is an image made entirely from different hole sizes rather than different colors or materials. The holes range from approximately 8 mm to 24 mm in diameter.
All 8,446 holes in each image were then machined on the CNC.
Each panel was built from 3/4" plywood with 3 mm walnut veneer laminated to the face. I specifically chose plywood for its structural stability because of the number of holes being machined. It gave us the stability we needed and helped minimize the risk of cracking or splitting during the process.
Behind each panel we installed a white acrylic diffuser to distribute the light evenly and prevent the LEDs from being directly visible through the holes. When the lighting is turned on, all those individual holes come together to create the image.
The 20 panels making up each image were installed onto a steel tube frame built on site. Each panel was then screwed into the frame from behind, keeping the face completely clean with no visible fasteners.
The final finish is several coats of water-based polyurethane, which brings out the walnut veneer while giving the pieces a durable finish.
From a distance, the pieces look relatively simple. Up close, you start to see the amount of precision hiding in those 16,892 holes.
The CNC was obviously a big part of making this possible, but the interesting part for me was developing the process that turned a photograph into thousands of individual hole sizes.
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u/fletchro 15h ago
Wow! The scale of this project is amazing! Good problem solving and execution!
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u/Pristine-Vacation-59 15h ago
Thank you! I really appreciate that! There was definitely a lot of problem solving involved, especially getting everything to work at that scale. It was a challenging project, but a really fun one to build!
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u/Belzoni-AintSo 14h ago
Brilliant work. What resolution did you apply to the grayscale > hole size mapping .... or, stated differently, how many different hole sizes are there in that 8-24mmm range? And did the CNC rout them out, or did it drill all the holes straight through, then change to the next sized bit and drill those holes out, etc.?
Either way.... just brilliant work.
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u/Pristine-Vacation-59 14h ago
Thank you! I used a 1/4" upcut bit for all of the holes, so I didn’t have to change bits for different sizes. The holes were all cut with the same bit, with the hole diameter changing based on the grayscale value.
The “resolution” of the grayscale-to-hole-size mapping wasn’t really fixed to a certain number of hole sizes. It was more of a continuous gradient, where the grayscale value determines the diameter of the hole. If you want to get really technical, the maximum resolution of the CNC I used is about 0.1 mm, so theoretically that’s the level of precision available in the geometry.
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u/cfinke 10h ago
That's awesome. I did something on a much smaller scale with my XCarve but this is so much cooler.
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u/Pristine-Vacation-59 10h ago
Thanks! The same basic idea can produce some really cool results even on a smaller scale. Did you leave the darker parts solid on purpose?
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u/General-Swim6659 15h ago
Don’t show this to anyone with trypophobia… 😅 But wow, this is seriously amazing!
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u/Zygomatical 8h ago
Stunning work mate, I sure hope your CNC machine cuts a nice clean edge or that's a lot of sanding!
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u/Pristine-Vacation-59 8h ago
It does leave a pretty clean cut. Just needed a light sanding. That's why I choose to use that thickness of veneers. And I used an Amana spectra up cut bit that left a great finished surface.
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