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

Monday, May 8, 2017

Ribbit - part one

The new ride up at Cultus Lake this year is called the ribbit. It had giant frogs that kids ride in as they bounce around in a circle. To create the sign I started with a quick sketch of the casual styled lettering. I vectorized the lettering by hand tracing it in PhotoShop.


These vectors were imported into Enroute. I created a rectangle around the lettering which was slightly bigger than the final size of the sign we would create.


I created a flat ref with the rectangle.



I then used a bitmap from the Woodgrain texture collection to create the woodgrain.


Once the relief had woodgrain I rendered the relief and then used this image to create the final shape of the board so it followed the woodgrain and looked broken on the ends. I used these new vectors to create a zero height relief.


I then merged highest, first selecting the ragged edged relief and followed by the first rectangular relief. This in effect cut the board to the new shape.




I then duplicated the relief to make an identical board for the back side of the sign.


I then created a new relief using the lettering border vectors. These were then merged highest with the board background relief. 



The last step was to modify the relief by adding the lettering.





I then duplicated the front relief and deleted the reliefs leaving only the outline vector. I built a vector rectangle which was slightly larger than the structural steel I would laminate into the centre of the sign. I used the jigsaw tool to subtract this shape from the sign. This new vector was used to cut out the centre piece for the sign.