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 9 February 2015

Stettler, Alberta!

Well Jody and I made it back from Cuba, and the food was actually pretty good! Although the exchange rate sucked. How sad is it when the Cuban peso is worth more than the Canadian dollar!
And then I got a cold...........
I'm a pretty big suck when I'm sick. Everything seems so much more difficult to do. Like trying to get Jody to change the channels on the TV, cause the remote is to far away to reach from the couch.

Before we left for Cuba, we finalized up a design for a small parade float that is for the Town of Stettler Alberta. They wanted a float that would sum up that Stettler is the Heart of Alberta. They also wanted to incorporate the fact that they also run an old fashioned steam locomotive, providing exciting tourist trips throughout the area.
The concept was pretty straight forward. They are supplying the flat deck trailer, and we'll supply the rest of the project. For this design, I went straight to 3d. I didn't bother doing a 2d sketch. I wanted to go straight to volumes and shapes right out of the gate. Now the actual project will differ a bit from this, as this was just the massing model for approvals, with very little details. The buildings will be actual miniature facades of existing Stettler buildings.
The first step after approvals was to get each section out of the 3d software, and into Corel. Corel will give me bang-on vectors, that I can import into Aspire for cutting out on our Techno.
Each half of the heart is 13 feet long, and 7 feet high. This was made from a total of 5 sections. 5 sections allows us to crate all of it into a 4X8 shipping crate, with the largest sections being just under 48X96"
We're providing the curved skins at each end of the heart, but they will be skinning the large broad sides of the heart in Alberta.
Next stop, train bridge!
8)
JWO




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