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

Friday, April 13, 2012

Dimensioning a corporate logo


Most of the work we do is stuff I design. These pieces are thought out from first concept as a three dimensional pieces. For the new house project I am doing dimensional versions of some logos which I did not design and this means I have to translate their corporate looking logos into three dimensional form without destroying the integrity of the original design. 

The first thing I do is look at the design and decide what is flexible and what isn't. Obviously the fonts and symbols are cast in stone as is the layout of the same. This only leaves dimension for the most part. The logo I am dealing with today is LOGIX, the makers of our foam concrete forms. Since they are slightly textured and we are dealing with concrete I decided to add a little texture through the sign. And I would raise the letters. The red blocks I would raise a little more. And I would round the corners of the sign to match the sign I did for Harold's Contracting.

I found a decent bitmap version of the logo online. This I imported into EnRoute and did a quick trace. It needed a little tweaking but came out pretty good. I replaced the small lettering because it was faster than tweaking the many letters by hand.


I would route the face of the sign from 1.5" Precision Board and then cut two more layers of 1" thick board to laminate to the back. The center layer would be cut to accept a square tubing frame inside. I first created a flat relief and then imported the SPLOTCHES bitmap from the TEXTURE MAGIC collection. 


On this sign the lettering would have the same texture as the background so I next raised the lettering 0.3" by modifying the original relief.



Then I selected the square above the 'i' and the red square below the 'L' and raised them 0.5".  As quick as that the sign was ready to tool path and send off to the MultiCam.



The MultiCam is doing short work of the logo while we are busy on other things.


Stay tuned to see the paint going on these signs in the next few days.

-dan