gettin ready for Indiana!

I finished the final paint on the Texture Rocks display. Woo-hoo, done! The gear motor works great, and jumps teeth when it's needed. I like it when it all works out!

The other job at hand was a sign I did for another shop 2 months ago. Their client decided they wanted to V-carve the border and text. This meant putting this 2'X3' slab back on the router for additional carving. Not an easy task at this point. I finally got it synced up to the original Aspire file. Not an easy task at all, due to the fact that the file didn't reside at 0-0 originally.
Set up time: 40 min.
Router time: 2min 28 seconds.
head shaking time: still going!

Jody and I are heading off to Indiana to teach at Robert Jones sign camp next week. This is going to be a lot of fun! There are 30 people signed up, and they're ready to learn.
I'm pumped at the opportunity of learning as well. There will be a lot of very experienced people attending.
I plan on posting daily during the camp, with as many pics as I can.
8)
JO

The Texture Rocks......again

With the Time Machine gone, were back to finishing up some projects before our next set build.
First up was the texture rocks display. It was left at the point where the rock was constructed from fiberglass reinforced bondo over a styrofoam base. I had hogged out all the foam so I would have an empty shell for the motor.

I punched a whole through the top for the butyl tubing that the 1/4-20 rod will run through.

I had a 12v gear-motor set aside for just this gig. It had a rather large pully pressed onto the shaft, and I had no desire to remove it. The plan was to just cut the pulley down to size on the table saw. The pulley has 4 radiating strengthening ribs molded into it. These are what I'm going to use to turn the top portion.

I made a quick coupler from the many offcuts of sintra that were left over from the coils on the time machine. I would have cut them on our Techno cnc, but today was feeling like a lazy day, and I couldn't be bothered to fire it up. You'll notice the grooves in it, these are going to sit over the ribs on the pulley . I also rounded them over so if anyone was to grab the rotating part of the display, it would bump up and jump slots, saving the gear-motor from damage.

I added a piece of 1/8 aluminum flat stock, drilled to fit the existing threaded holes on the gear-motor box.
I tacked it with crazy glue so it wouldn't move. I also drilled some divots in the HDU that will act like a mechanical lock for the reinforced bondo that will eventually hold the flat stock permanently.
The other side is pretty rough due to the styrofoam buck melting a bit with the bondo, so I didn't need to add any divots on that side.

This will definitely hold the flat stock in place!

With the assembly all together and rotating properly, it's of to paint. But not today, I'm going home to finish some 3d modelling.
8)
JO

Cutting Texture

I was able to get the files for the spinning texture display cut on Sunday. It was really nice to 'build' something physical and not digital. Although both have their place!

The spinning text portion came out great! Exactly as I drew it. Before I cut them from the sheet of HDU, I had the router mark the centre axis. I then marked the parts in pencil so I would have a dead-centre for the the pole they'll mount to.

 The rocks portion came out just as nice, although I did bump the stepover up a bit to reduce the machining time a little. I ran these at 360 IPM and the 'ROCKS' only took 28 minutes with a 1/16" tapered ball nose.

While waiting for the files to cut, I hacked the rock form out of some leftover Ripley's Shark styrofoam. This piece is around 6" deep. Not to big, it won't take up much room as it sits on the front counter.

I glued the "ROCKS" portion to the flat on the styrofoam form and coated it with fiberglass reinforced autobody filler. Despite what you might hear, you can actually coat styrofoam with Bondo. It does eat the foam a tiny bit, but not nearly like fiberglass resin does. This has given me a very strong shell to work with. I will remove all the foam when I have finished all the cleanup on the filler. I'm thinking I will glass in some mesh on the inside to give it even more strength, but it might be a little redundant. I'll have to see how thick the shell actually is when the foam comes out.
Sadly, I have to wait to finish this piece further until next week. Time right now is a little tight on other stuff. But at least I got it this far!
8)
JO

Bringin on the Texture!

O.K. I'll admit it. Sometimes I get distracted. I snuck in some time to work on a project that I have been wanting to make for a while. As I have been infront of the computer lately, I decided to draw it up, with the intention of running it on our Techno cnc.

This will be a motorized piece that will live at the shop, but I will take to various training seminars I get to teach at.

 I just rendered it quickly for the blog, as I know what it will look like when it's finished. The bare vectors I drew up in Corel. I did it this way to allow me to use some of the shaping tools available to quickly shape the wonky edges. The main rock heap won't be cut on our Techno cnc as it will be faster to sculpt by hand. And because it needs to be hollow. I'm hollowing it out to allow me to put in a gear motor that will slowly spin the word 'texture' at the top of the sign.
Getting it to look awesome was done in Aspire.

I first created a shallow bend with the 2 rail sweep function. This will allow the relief to kinda bulge in the middle.

 I selected the outside vector of my design and raised it up to give it some additional thickness. Then I picked the two vectors that create the border for the text, and raised them up as a new component.

I just kept on moving along and raised the outline of the text base plate up as well. This will help define the text a bit more, and give it a more polished look.

And finally, the actual text. I decided to make the top of the text angular for a bit more interest. I don't generally go with an angle greater than 30 degrees, as Aspire keeps the exact angle all around each letter, which can look silly with too steep of an angle. True ISO form letters would have the angle increase, or decrease, depending on the width of the text. As this isn't a feature yet, I just keep the angle low, so it's less noticeable!

Finally, to add the magic of texture. I created a bitmap image in Photoshop awhile ago that I use for most of my bumpy textures. I imported this in, and coverted it to a component, with a bump height of around .180".

This I wanted to cover the whole block, so I don't need to do any trimming at all. I could use the text vectors to trim the texture away, leaving the letters clean and texture free...........but that would look poopy. After all, it does say texture!

 Using the very outside vector, I trimmed the texture away, leaving the final model ready to cut.

I will mirror this whole model, less the text, and apply them back to back. This way, the word 'texture' will always appear while it is slowly rotating. I'm quite happy so far. I am going to cut this with my trusty 1/16" tapered ball nose cutter on Saturday. I will post about modelling the other portions as I progress.
It's funny how goofing off from 'work' still leads to running our Techno cnc.
8)
JO