WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was almost ten years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one of these machines - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Along with the CNC router I discovered the wonderful material called Precision Board and the glues, primers and other companion products they offer. Since then we have gone through many tons of the material using it in most signs and projects we tackle. This journal will chronicle our many adventures both past, present and future. I'll talk from the perspective of someone who pushes these products to the creative limit on a daily basis. I'll be adding to the stories two or three times each week. -dan

Friday, September 16, 2011

Workshop name tags 1

With the next Sign Magic Workshop quickly approaching (September 30 - October 2) it is time to start in on the name tags we create for our guests. I started with a sketch, as always. I designed in a hurry, ideas flow better that way, and scribbled down my ideas, moving on to the next as soon as I had it nailed. The details would come later.


The vectors were quick and easy... nothing hard here.


The relief was a simple oval, modified with a raised oval.



To create the texture I perused my TEXTURE MAGIC collection and selected one I like...  spaghetti. I enlarged it enough to make sure the 1/8" ball nose bit to fit in everywhere. This was then applied to the relief.


The lettering border was made into a relief which was then modified with the oval to shape it to the same dome shape as the background relief. This was then merged (highest to the relief.



Then I applied the lettering.



When I created the bowl for routing the relief I took notice of the cool effect that happened when I created a separate 3/4" thick relief. I decided I loved it. The spaghetti faded out on the edges and looked a lot like spaghetti on a plate.So I created a new oval slightly larger than the original relief. I used the limit height command to chamfer the edges. 



 This was merged highest with the original relief, completing the file.



-dan