Speaking from Experience: Galloping along

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

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Galloping along

We were originally going to make the carousel sign include a half of a real carousel horse that I had salvaged a number of years ago. But as we got into the build of the park the space where were going to put the sign it was decided that the space will now be shared with the balloon adventure sign. (I'll post that entry tomorrow)

The redesign of the positioning of the signs meant we had to take another look at the sign design too.

I dud a search online and came up with a beautiful STL mesh file of a carousel horse. Buying this mesh file would save many hours of modeling. I bought it from www.3dmodelclub.com I've used their models from time to time and have always been very pleased with the quality.

I imported the model in EnRoute and sized it appropriately. I then merged it with a zero height relief and used the slice tool to take away the square zero height relief.

I then created the border around the horse and lettering. These borders wi=ould be used to create layers.

I then merged (Highest) the horse to the first flat relief.

The second border around the lettering was created as a separate relief as it would overlap the horse just a little.

Then I merged (highest) this border to the one underneath.

Adding the lettering was the last step. I used the bevel tool to modify the original base relief.

I used the slice tool to cut the relief into two layers. They were then positioned and tool patched before being sent to the MultiCam to be routed from 30 lb Precision Board. The resulting file turned out pretty cool!

The sign will now be glued up and then hand finished. Everyone is calling dibs on painting this little beauty. Stay tuned...

-dan