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

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Two more done!

Joyce's and Reuben's panels are relatively simple, but great exercises for those just starting with the textures in EnRoute. The vectors were simple. I needed to build the border and frame separately to make things simple.


I worked on the border first, a simple dome relief with the rivets added in the net step/ I them imported the splotches bitmap and applied it to the file to instantly create a rough surface. 


Then I created a slightly domed relief, added the letter border and texture. Lastly I added the lettering and added the woodgrain texture  to the background




It routed up to become a very cool name plaque. I know Joyce has done a lot of sandblasted signs and I wanted to show her just how easy it is to do with a router.


Reuben's was a similarly simple plaque. I created the border and the background reliefs as slightly domed files. Then I added the bamboo bitmap texture. Since the frame, background and lettering border were separate I could then nudge them up and down into position before combining/merging them together. 





As a final step I added the lettering as a beveled relief.


The files were cut on the MultiCam router into 1.5" thick 30 lb Precision Board.




-dan