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.

Friday 9 November 2012

The next few days were LONG ones!

I tried to get pictures as our LG job progressed, but with 14 hours on Tuesday, then starting at 9am on Wednesday and not finishing until Thursday at 7 pm when we finished the install, I kinda forgot to document everything.
I got the print files done Monday evening for delivery to Autotrim in Lindsay first thing Tuesday. With the exception of the large invoices, I quite like visiting those guys!

The molding for the return of the small phone came out really good, right off the Techno, but it still needed a bit of sanding and sealing due to the porosity of the pvc. I did leave each section longer by 1/2" to allow for any sizing issues, but didn't really need it in the end.
 The back side of the molding got a 2" piece of 1/2" black pvc to give me the final thickness of the back of the phone. I could have heat bent the pvc easy enough, but decided just to kerf the material instead. It allowed for a little more control when mating and gluing it to the molding.
 With the molding all assembled and cleaned up, I used a hole saw to punch the 2" headphone jack through it. This was finished on the inside with a half section of abs pipe.

 The other end of the frame received the usb port and the pockets for the screw heads, as well as the very small, mysterious hole.
I machined the Torx screw heads from 1/4" styrene. I'll glue these in after we paint them the silver color that they get.

The lighting truss from Palmer Audio arrived Wednesday morning, and we took a few minutes to figure out how the small phone was going to mount to it. Thank goodness for creative clamping options, cause I'm pretty sure this isn't an intended mounting configuration!

Due to the heavy time constraints, we decided to go with a nickel finish on the metal bezel that ends up framing in the screen of the phone. There is so little of it showing on the real phone, that it was hard to tell if it was chrome or smoked chrome, so the darker nickel color worked like a charm. it almost becomes a non-factor, even at these scales.
The medium sized phone is a simpler version of the phone. It's bigger at 48"X82". As this phone will get black out cloth all the way around to hide the rear interactive projector, we didn't need the rounded molding or screws and usb port. We used 1/2" black pvc, edge glued to the face to create the thickness needed. The chrome bezel frame was done a little differently on this one. We cut the trim piece from 1/4" styrene, glued it directly to the face frame, then glued up 1.25" X 1/16" strips along the outside to create the illusion of thickness. As this phone also gets a full 1/4" acrylic screen added to it, the screen and the bezel frame become flush at the surface.

We arrived at the venue where the LG launch party was being held and started installing right away.


The first install was the small phone. With the backlit keys and the recessed screen that houses the tethered real phones, it looked stellar. They blasted so much light on it, the screen looked like it was backlit, even though it wasn't!
The added detail of the screws looked awesome. Even though no-one will even notice, I was glad I added them in.

the medium sized phone was installed next, Once the projector finally got synced up, it to was pretty awesome in real life. It's size alone was something to behold! We had to make the screen a little wider than real life dimensions due to the aspect ratio of the projector, but honestly, no-one would ever realize it. The buttons on this phone didn't need to light up, so we used reverse-vinyl cutouts on the backside, then back sprayed it with black.
The final and largest phone was the "Media wall" phone. this bad boy was 90" tall and over 14' long. This was all flats, except for the pocketed out grill for the speaker. This is where people will get photographed in front of it, on the red carpet.
Even tough the time was short, and the days became one looooooooong one, both we, and the clent were very happy with the finished product.
I think I want to build more large phones, it was exhausting but awesome. And when I finally wake up, I'll remember all the good parts fondly!
8)
JO




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