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

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Roll out the barrel!

For the upper area of the pub (London roofline) we needed a barrel of spirits. It would be addressed to the Fox & Hounds and act as a sign, suspended by some ropes strung through some old wooden pulleys.  It would measure about 24" long and be flattened out some to become oval shaped.

The barrel file for the MultiCam was easy to create in EnRoute. Vectors of a simple arc and vertical line was the first order of business. Then I used the revolve contours command to create a mesh object.


 This mesh object was then positioned on a zero height relief and merged together with it.

I then deleted the mesh and resized the relief vertically to be 6" tall in he front view. This would give me the oval shaped barrel I wanted (when looked at the end view).


Once I had everything sized I used the slice command to slice the barrel into four 1.5" thick slices. 


 Then I positioned the slices to make one routing file. I would duplicate these pieces to create two halves of a barrel.



In the next installment I'll show how things glued up and we started in on creating the barrel staves. Stay tuned...

-dan