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, December 28, 2012

Whistle build


A whistle punk was a young lad (generally) who's job it was to blow whistle signals that warned the loggers out in the bush that the steam donkey was about to tighten up the cables to drag another log out of the woods. His job was also to make sure any wayward sparks from the wood fired boiler got put out before they started any fires in the woods.

The logo and sign feature a three dimensional, slightly cartoonized steam whistle. Building the file in EnRoute is pretty easy. First off I imported the drawing of the logo/sign. This would be used for reference alone.

Then, using the shape drawing tools I created a rough version of the whistle. This, once more is for reference alone.


I then used the line drawing tool to quickly create an approximation of the whistle and valve shape.


Then using the point edit tool I tweaked the vectors until I had the shape I wanted.


I then used these vectors and the revolve tool to create mesh files.



These meshes were then merged highest with a zero height relief.


I selected this relief and using the slice command removed the background.



I then resized the relief of the whistle in relation to the sign.


Since the whistle was quite large the next task was to slice it to the thickness of the Precision Board.


 The end result was the pieces I would route. These will be duplicated to form a fully dimensional piece.


Next week the files will be sent off to the MultiCam and the fun will begin.

-dan