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 14 January 2013

Marketing: In Miniature 2

I spent a lot of the weekend drawing up and cross-checking parts and pieces for the miniature store we're building.
Jody and I start every morning with our daily staple of coffee. 2 mediums, 2 cream, 2 sugar. And every morning, the fabulous girls at the donut shop write something different on our lids. It has now become a tradition! I think I'll start posting these now, as they always bring a smile to our faces.

Once at the shop, things started up right away.

Over the weekend, I drew up the wine bottles that will sit on the many gondola shelves that populate the 2 stores. I wrapped one shelf, just to make sure everything was going to fit properly. Score!
Jody was tasked with the endless job of assembling them all. There are 24 gondola's, that consist of 9 pieces each. That's a total of 216 pcs. Quite a bit of assembly! Thankfully the parts are light, or she'd probably quit.
I was also able to get all the walls cut. However, for some reason, it keeps slipping my mind that we're building 2 models at the same time, so occasionally I don't cut enough. DOH! These interior arches were one of those parts as well. These will reside on the inside of the store, as a small architectural detail over the windows,  just to break up the large boring walls.
Although it looks like an earthquake tragedy at the moment, it is coming together rather quickly.
We were kind of hesitant at first to move to far along without having our clients come out. But Jami and Ryan were able to make it by mid-day today, and were quite happy with the size and style. So full steam ahead!
There hasn't been a single drawing to go by on this job, so it kind of fills a closet desire of mine to be an architect, without the legalities of being sued by miniature people if the structure were to collapse:)
It was a lot of fun to come up with a universal design for this job.
The base of the building is getting a smooth block-work detail added to it. The blocks will scale out to be 12"X24" This will wrap all the way around the building, breaking at the doors and windows. With all the techniques available to create this, I went for the "old-school" way of using a height gauge with a scribing blade in it. It took a while to carefully scribe all the stone-work for the two buildings.
Once it gets its coping, it's going to be great!
We left the shop around 5, as we had to pick up all the rare earth magnets we need to attach the shelves to the floor of the model. By that time, Jody had conquered over half the gondolas.

This is a lot of fun. I love it!
8)
JO





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