One of the reasons we purchased a router almost seven years ago was to fabricate the custom pieces we would need for the house we were planning. It has taken those years to be able to afford to build the house. But the wait didn't hurt me for it allowed us time to develop our design skills and get to know both the programs and router a whole lot better. We'll be using the router a whole lot on almost everything imaginable. The exterior of the building will be a combination of routed Precision Board and sculpted fiberglass reinforced concrete. On the side wall of the house the stone work is much higher than the rest of the house because the ground slopes down in that part. The wall is large and has no windows. It needed some detail to fix that. The solution was to create some pilasters. The same heart detail will be included to look as if it has been chiseled into the stone. There will be six pilasters in all and this is the kind of detail that is perfect for a CNC router.
I designed the first test piece in a similar fashion that we did the others yesterday. The heart shapes are layered into the center. I've routed the outside edge on one top corner - also part of the test.
We built the underlying structure from treated plywood. Diamond lath will be stapled to this form and it will be mounted to the wall. Fiberglass reinforced concrete will be applied and sculpted around these to become the rock work appear like in the sketch above.
We will use EnRoute, Precision Board and our MultiCam to create plenty more such details throughout the house project to make it unique and original.
Stay tuned to watch it happen.
-dan
