Cutting Texture

I was able to get the files for the spinning texture display cut on Sunday. It was really nice to 'build' something physical and not digital. Although both have their place!

The spinning text portion came out great! Exactly as I drew it. Before I cut them from the sheet of HDU, I had the router mark the centre axis. I then marked the parts in pencil so I would have a dead-centre for the the pole they'll mount to.

 The rocks portion came out just as nice, although I did bump the stepover up a bit to reduce the machining time a little. I ran these at 360 IPM and the 'ROCKS' only took 28 minutes with a 1/16" tapered ball nose.

While waiting for the files to cut, I hacked the rock form out of some leftover Ripley's Shark styrofoam. This piece is around 6" deep. Not to big, it won't take up much room as it sits on the front counter.

I glued the "ROCKS" portion to the flat on the styrofoam form and coated it with fiberglass reinforced autobody filler. Despite what you might hear, you can actually coat styrofoam with Bondo. It does eat the foam a tiny bit, but not nearly like fiberglass resin does. This has given me a very strong shell to work with. I will remove all the foam when I have finished all the cleanup on the filler. I'm thinking I will glass in some mesh on the inside to give it even more strength, but it might be a little redundant. I'll have to see how thick the shell actually is when the foam comes out.
Sadly, I have to wait to finish this piece further until next week. Time right now is a little tight on other stuff. But at least I got it this far!
8)
JO

This texture rocks!

I didn't get to the shop today as some other things had come up pretty last minute. But I did get to model the 'ROCKS!" section of the display. I thought I would walk you through this portion as well. There isn't much that is different from the "Texture" portion. The process is identical:

I imported the vectors from Corel, although I could have just as easily done this part all in Aspire. I also want this to be kind of curvy as well. So I drew up the 3 vectors that I will use for the 2 rail sweep.

This wavy bend will make the word far more interesting to look at. It's the small details that add to the overall finished piece. A very small step to do, but well worth the pre-thought in the end.

Selecting the outside edge of the text boundary, I raised it up a little. And as I selected the "add" function when I was creating this component, it will get "added' to the base relief I created with the 2 rail sweep.

I selected the final text vectors and chose to slightly dome the tops of them. Not a lot, just enough so they're not so blah looking.

Back to my textured bitmap that I used on the word "TEXTURE". Might as well keep it consistent! I kept the height of the texture to around the same height as before. Around .180".

The final step is to trim it all up! I selected the outermost vectors and deleted any of the model outside of this.
Voila! Done. All in all, these steps only took a total of 3 minutes to do. That's what makes Aspire so great. And it was fun too!
I might go in on Sunday and cut these pieces on our Techno cnc. I am looking forward to figuring out the gearing to spin the upper portion.
8)
JO

Bringin on the Texture!

O.K. I'll admit it. Sometimes I get distracted. I snuck in some time to work on a project that I have been wanting to make for a while. As I have been infront of the computer lately, I decided to draw it up, with the intention of running it on our Techno cnc.

This will be a motorized piece that will live at the shop, but I will take to various training seminars I get to teach at.

 I just rendered it quickly for the blog, as I know what it will look like when it's finished. The bare vectors I drew up in Corel. I did it this way to allow me to use some of the shaping tools available to quickly shape the wonky edges. The main rock heap won't be cut on our Techno cnc as it will be faster to sculpt by hand. And because it needs to be hollow. I'm hollowing it out to allow me to put in a gear motor that will slowly spin the word 'texture' at the top of the sign.
Getting it to look awesome was done in Aspire.

I first created a shallow bend with the 2 rail sweep function. This will allow the relief to kinda bulge in the middle.

 I selected the outside vector of my design and raised it up to give it some additional thickness. Then I picked the two vectors that create the border for the text, and raised them up as a new component.

I just kept on moving along and raised the outline of the text base plate up as well. This will help define the text a bit more, and give it a more polished look.

And finally, the actual text. I decided to make the top of the text angular for a bit more interest. I don't generally go with an angle greater than 30 degrees, as Aspire keeps the exact angle all around each letter, which can look silly with too steep of an angle. True ISO form letters would have the angle increase, or decrease, depending on the width of the text. As this isn't a feature yet, I just keep the angle low, so it's less noticeable!

Finally, to add the magic of texture. I created a bitmap image in Photoshop awhile ago that I use for most of my bumpy textures. I imported this in, and coverted it to a component, with a bump height of around .180".

This I wanted to cover the whole block, so I don't need to do any trimming at all. I could use the text vectors to trim the texture away, leaving the letters clean and texture free...........but that would look poopy. After all, it does say texture!

 Using the very outside vector, I trimmed the texture away, leaving the final model ready to cut.

I will mirror this whole model, less the text, and apply them back to back. This way, the word 'texture' will always appear while it is slowly rotating. I'm quite happy so far. I am going to cut this with my trusty 1/16" tapered ball nose cutter on Saturday. I will post about modelling the other portions as I progress.
It's funny how goofing off from 'work' still leads to running our Techno cnc.
8)
JO