MULTICAM: Slicing and dicing a large sign

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, April 5, 2012

Slicing and dicing a large sign

A project that's been in production for a while is a large sign for the gable of the Fox and Hounds. It provided some unique challenges - predominantly on account of the many layers and size of the sign. Here's a quick mockup of how it will look when it is up.

We started with a logo I had designed . The vectors were far too complex to create routing files.

All the line work was first to go and then I reduced the fox to a simple outline. This work was done in Illustrator, the same program as I had used to create the logo.

I then imported the vectors into EnRoute and scaled them up to the size we needed.

Then I broke out and duplicated the vectors to create the six layers of the sign.

Then I sliced up each vector to fit on full sheets of Precision Board.

From here on I'll create a few reliefs for some bits like the lettering and flag background and then tool path the rest as cutouts. The routing didn't take long. Next time I'll be showing how we started gluing it all together. Stay tuned...

-dan