In years past we would have built a piece like this all by hand. We would layout the piece by hand and then with a handheld plasma cutter would have cut out the sheet metal. All holes would have been hand drilled. As you can imagine it was slow and involved lots of grinding to smooth out the edges. The upper section of the keel would have been hand formed in pencil rod and then welded in place. The blades on the keel and axe would be hand paid out and plasma cut as well.
On this project everything was designed in EnRoute (in minutes) and then sent to the Multicam CNC plasma cutter. The many pieces were cut in a few more minutes- complete with the many holes. There was minimal grinding to touch up the edges. Knowing the pieces were very precise meant we simply had to line up the edges of the back and front and then weld away. Everything fit perfectly and was nice and square. As you can imagine this saved a great deal of time and labor!
