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 with what I saw 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 - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Through extensive research and LOTS of hands-on practice I quickly found out that my MultiCam router was capable of just about anything imaginable.This journal will chronicle that journey to date and continue each week with two or three entries as I continue to explore just what is possible with this wonderful tool... -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