WELCOME!

It is hard to believe that it was almost ten years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one of these machines - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Along with the CNC router I discovered the wonderful material called Precision Board and the glues, primers and other companion products they offer. Since then we have gone through many tons of the material using it in most signs and projects we tackle. This journal will chronicle our many adventures both past, present and future. I'll talk from the perspective of someone who pushes these products to the creative limit on a daily basis. I'll be adding to the stories two or three times each week. -dan

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Name assembly line

The name plaques have been coming off the router very regularly. They are all routed from 1.5" thick 30 lb Precision Board.That means I've also been busy both creating the files and documenting the process. I decided to post a bunch of the panels that had either been covered previously in the archive or were similar to others yet to come. Brian's panel was a simple oval with a log round texture generated by a bitmap from my collection. I added the carriage bolt heads for a little detail. It's a nice contrast from the smooth beveled letters and the somewhat random woodgrain. This piece will paint up nicely.


Jay's panel is the classic driftwood with some period lettering and some 'custom hammered' rivets. The bitmap texture was augmented with some virtual carving to make the grain a little more random. This has been covered before in the archived on this blog.


The creation of Phil's wrench routing file has just been covered in the post previous to this one. Here's a pic of the piece just after I pulled it off the MultiCam.


We just covered the creation of Roger's routing file. I never tire of this classic look. It will only get better with the painting!


Janey's was the first one off the router. It features a texture off my DVD collection called flower power. Bec has some cool things in mind for this piece as she has some new colors she has been itching to try out.


Gary's panel uses a classic David Butler border from his 'Butler Gold II collection'. The font is from Letterhead Fonts and it's been tweaked a little to make it work on this piece.


That's all for now, but rest assured there are more coming and each will feature step by steps of the process used to create them.

-dan