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.

Saturday 1 September 2012

back on the Town

I really wanted to post through the Turbo Town build, but the deadlines keep coming in such fast waves, I've really only had time to work and sleep. There have been a lot of changes that have been huge setbacks for us. The not so nice thing about these REALLY short deadlines is the fact that there is ZERO room for error. The router needs to cut every piece once, the cad files have to work, the paint can't have any problems, assembly has to go without a hitch, be because if one thing goes wrong, the whole schedule gets screwed up. Paint has been the worst problem for us. We were asked to use commercially available products, that way if anything needs repairing on location, someone there can go grab it quick. The commercially available stuff has it's own set of problems, namely the dry/ recoat times. Paint that has compatiblity issues is a nightmare at 2am!
So all that aside, I am kind of backstepping a little for now, to catch you up.


All of the eyes came to us pre-cast from urethane resin. our job on these was to spray them out, and put on the pupils. This went pretty easy once we employed my little Unimat lathe I've had for years. Jody was able to chuck the eyes, and spin them so the painted pupil came out even and smooth. We went with a small white dot cut from vinyl, as a highlight.




The construction of the 11 buildings was an exhaustive task. That was something I was not expecting. They did go together quite nicely, but it took a really long time. They also took up a huge amount of space once they were painted, because we couldn't really stack them up.

The garage door hinge was pretty straight forward. The doors will open via mono-filament wire from off screen. I pulled the hinge point back far enough to allow gravity to be able to close the doors, eliminating the use of another pull cable.
 We left the roof's on all of them removable for access. They look pretty sweet with the character logos applied and all painted.
8)
JO




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