When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIRE software, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Monday 13 February 2012

3X the fun!

Saturday I started work on the 3 portholes that will go into the wall in the design studio. I had drawn the vectors quite quickly in Aspire. On some jobs, it's a smoother workflow staying in just one piece of software.

These are all just 2d cuts in 3/8" MDF. I am trying to use up extra material before the move, so I don't have move sheets of readily available materials.
I never get tired of watching our Techno cnc make parts that I designed! The run time was very quick at 12 minutes. I quickly cleaned off the fur from the edges and started assembly.
I used up the small amount of doweling I had on the shelf for the hinge portion. I didn't worry about the gap between the dowel and the porthole as I would be texturing the whole porthole with our plaster/ glue mixture. This mixture is used quite extensively in set and props. It's very durable and a teeny bit flexible, making it ideal and cost effective.
Sunday I went in and primed them with a dark dark grey latex, then painted them the bronze color that they will be.

They're lookin pretty hot now! I still have to add the eye bolts to them, then add the patina. I will find a bit of time tomorrow for that. We solved all of our R&D issues with the miniature sky dancer that shoots on Friday. It was a bit of a wild ride. We abandoned the cable system as it just wouldn't behave as randomly as the real thing. In the end we are going with just air, which didn't work all that well at first, but we found a more usable material that justs seems to work. That being said, I think they're going to have to shoot at 72 FPS because he behaves well, just really fast! And as he is supposed to appear at first like he's "full size", he needs to be slowed down. It's gonna be a fun shoot, that's for sure!
8)
JO
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1 comment:

  1. John Christensen15 February 2012 at 12:59

    Your mixture of glue/plaster, is that just to add some texture to your portholes, or does it provide some other purpose?

    Do you mind sharing your mixture?

    ReplyDelete

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