Speaking from Experience: More drawing the old fashioned way

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

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

More drawing the old fashioned way

I thought I might show another project's development in sketches. These were done in my sketchbook on a plane ride as I traveled home on a business trip. The drawings were quick and I filled there pages of my sketchbook in about half an hour or less. You can see the drawings were far from perfect. The client would never see them as they were just to guide our building of the feature. The first drawing was a quick sketch of the robot router. The ideas were pretty well formed at this point.

The next sketch was the top and side views. At this point I wanted to work out the scale of the piece and positioning of the gantry. We ended up going a little wider as we built it but the bulk of the measurements went ahead as planned.

The last sketch in this series was for the metal framework. From this quick drawing I was able to work out a material list. Take note of the simplicity of the sketch and lack of angles or exact measurements. We build by eye for the most part and the drawings I do are simply a guide. Just the same they are a valuable tool to work things out, thereby enabling a quicker build of the finished feature.