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, 17 November 2014

It's fun to stay at the YMCA!

The wagon, lunchbox, and the easel got sprayed and finished up. I used two pieces of foil tape stuck back to back, and sprayed white, to make the paper on the easel. It doesn't look like they used it in the end, but the option was there anyways!
Jody set to work painting all the little people. I don't think she found it tedious, but I thought I heard some language not suitable for all ears, muttered quietly while she worked. But it could have just been the dog, not sure :)
It's a little funny on some projects, but there always is one part that constantly weighs on my mind during a build. It's that one part that haunts me until I figure out how the heck I'm going to make it.
Sometimes it can be a complicated assembly, other times it can be as simple as the order of masking for paint. But for me, there's always one. On this build it was the shovels. Simple when it's done, but not so apparent when we start.
It was the shape and scale thickness that was my curse! They were to thin to sculpt from Aves epoxy putty, which we used for all the sculpting portions on this.
I decided finally to laser cut the shovel blade from thin magazine cover paper, then wrap it onto a wire. Once I shaped the blade it to it's final form, I treated it with super glue to hold its shape, and hold it to the wire handle. Done! Haunting over!
 Jody did a great job painting the figures. You can't see it, but she painted lettuce and tomato on the right guys sandwich. Now that's dedication. I might keep her on after her 3 month probationary period.


The final piece was the long saw blade. That was laser cut from .02" PETG. Not great material to laser cut, but it fit the bill!

Jody did have to change a couple of characters on the day of the shoot, but it was a quick re-paint.
And as we didn't bring the dog, I didn't hear any cursive muttering......
8)
JWO


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