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, 6 January 2012

On the router awhile....again.

I got most of the Institute sign machined up today. It's amazing the drive I have when the projects fun. Weird.
Our I carver machined the the tail rudder on the mechanical fish today as well. I was hoping to have all of my files on this sign ready to cut, but regular work seems to get in the way sometimes.
I did manage to prime the Lawyer sign. This one is looking good! Getting the urethane glue off of the edges was a bit of a pain, but it didn't stop the progress any. I managed to squeeze in some time to glue up the robot fish halves. We're working tomorrow, so I'll clean the seams up, and hopefully machine the portholes and bow thruster covers.

For the bow thruster covers to fit, I selected all the edges around the base of the thruster assembly to give me the exact size I needed. Then I simply extruded them out to the thickness I needed, closed the shape, then chamfered the edges to give a rounded edge.



I decided that I wanted to have recessed mounting allowances to add to the look. This is pretty fast in Hexagon. I could have done this step in Aspire, but it was faster to keep going the way I was.
 I quickly drew a cylinder and placed it in the upper left corner of the cover.

Then just copied and pasted it until I had 4 of them.

Then I just booleaned the shapes for the above results. Because the fish is sticking out from the sign, I will add another cover to the back side as well, so when the sign is viewed from the front it will look even.
I better get around to cutting these and the porthole eyes tomorrow! Jody and I are headed to Mexico for a week coming up, and when we get back I have to start moving the shop to the new location. Boy the Techno looks heavy........
8)
JO
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