Anyone who knows me already knows I’m a huge World of Warcraft fan. Most of my free time somehow ends up back in Azeroth, so it was only natural that one of my CNC projects would be inspired by the game.

The Horde emblem has always been one of the most iconic symbols in the game, and I wanted to recreate it as a CNC relief that could hang on the wall instead of staying on the screen.

This project focuses on capturing the layered details of the emblem through relief carving, followed by hand painting and weathering to give it the worn, battle-tested look seen throughout the Warcraft universe. The goal wasn’t to make it look brand new, but to create something that feels like it has existed in Azeroth for years.

If you’re a fellow WoW player—or simply enjoy fantasy-themed CNC projects—I hope you’ll have as much fun making this piece as I did.

Lok’tar Ogar!

To be honest, I’m still fairly new to CNC, and this project turned out to be much easier than I expected.

I found a render of the Horde emblem online and uploaded it to AI Craft’s Relief Generator. About two minutes later, it generated the relief model I was looking for. After that, I imported the model into Makera Studio, adjusted the size, generated the toolpaths automatically, and sent the job to my machine.

The entire preparation process took me around 10 minutes before machining started, which was surprisingly quick for a project like this.

Zane Zhang