Sometimes what seems like the simplest of ideas can turn into a most challenging project. Our client, Sonbuilt Custom Homes had a nice logo, done by someone else. The idea was to create a lectern to be used at trade shows and as a display piece in the office. But we were going to ramp things up a little. It would be in a shadow box, fully 3D with LED back lighting and a waterfall with real water. The box would measure 32" x 32" x 16" deep. My client would build a watertight aluminum enclosure and do the fancy woodwork around it. We would do the logo as an insert. Thankfully he had vector files which I thought would save me a bunch of work.
Once I opened the vector file I found it was a jumble of lines. It looked great in print but was not very useful for our purposes. It made me scratch my head for a few days as I puzzled it out. After separating the many elements I decided only the sunburst was usable and that needed to be heavily modified before we could create a routing file.
Once separated the vector sunburst looked like this. If I created a file using this vector the points of the star would be far too fragile to be practical.
So using the offset tool with radius corners I first offset to the outside, deleted the original, then offset to the inside. Then I tweaked each ray of the sunburst to a smaller radius on the inside and out to the edge of the piece on the outside. This was cut on the bottom to the shape of the clouds.
Then using the shape of the piece I wanted to route I created the basic relief. This would be modified using an oval vector of the right dimensions
Once I modified the original relief using the oval shape it looked like this.
Then I used the starburst vector to modify the relief once more to create the background for the logo.
Finally I created a vector that would be used for an offset cut. This would be used to cut out the piece. The file was now ready to tool path and then send to the router.
Stay tuned to see how it routes and then is assembled for the lectern.
-dan
