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.

Tuesday 18 September 2012

The desk nearing completion!

I decided to not work this weekend! Although Sunday I kinda wanted to get back to the desk. Unfinished projects eat away at me. Plus the desk is fairly large, and it's taking up an awful lot of space to not be used.

On Monday, I decided that instead of buying more acrylic for the front of the desk, I'd use the sizable chunks of 1/2" that was left over from the Molson bars that we built in the summer. 1/2" is WAY overkill for the desk, but it was here, and It was within an inch of what I needed on the large piece. Of course, it wasn't textured, but Aspire would soon fix that little problem!
I drew up the file in PS for export as a greyscale into Aspire. I just used a spatter brush and saved it out as a 16 bit greyscale.


I used a 1/2" ball nose cutter with an 8% step-over. I set the relief to .125" deep. As this is 1/2" acrylic, I certainly had the thickness. The hopes is that after I spray it with a scary green colour, I can edge light it so it glows green at night through the office window. Not a big deal in the summer, but in the winter it gets dark at 4 pm, so people will still be out and about.

The painted details are now done on the portions that we had assembled. We're kind of building the desk, while working on a few other paying jobs, so It's not going super-fast.
Jody got the textured desk surface painted and glazed, and we got that part installed on Monday
We also got the back supports installed to help solidify the upper counter strength. The textured acrylic will reside between these supports, from the lower counter to the underside of the upper counter.
My desktop pc is screaming for us to finish! As am I. It should be done and finished tomorrow (I hope)
We have to deliver another order of road stencils to the township tomorrow, so that might make finishing the desk a little hard, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
8)
JO





Posted by at
Labels:

2 comments:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)