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

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Fishing boat relief - Part two

To create the cab of the little boat I first created two zero height reliefs.


I opted to create meshes and then merge them to the relief, rather than modify the reliefs with the revolve tool. Either procedure would have worked in this case. I generally use this method as it allows me more freedom to adjust the height of things before locking it down by merging it with the relief.



The mesh shows red when selected, green when not. I was mostly happy with the result but decided it needed stretching both vertically and even more horizontally. I checked various views to make sure it was how I desired.




Once adjusted I selected the zero height relief and the mesh cylinder and merged highest using the appropriate tool.


When things are working properly the relief looks blotchy with the mesh still in place.


I was happy so I deleted the mesh.






I then used the second zero height relief to effectively clip the back of the fishing boat cab by merging lowest. The cab looked a little narrow so I stretched it towards the back of the boat and then nudged it forward until I was happy.



I then used the slice command to take off the zero height relief.


I was happy with the little boat at this stage and it was ready to tool path and send to the MultiCam except for the fact that it was four inches thick and our Precision Board was only two inches thick.


The solution was to use the slice tool once more to create two slices.



After the slice tool is used the top relief shows up.  This is on a different plane than the lower slice. The original relief is still in place and needs to be moved to the side.



Before routing I need to duplicate the two layers of hull and then flip them to form the other side of the boat.