Gearing up for fun...

We've made plenty of projects with gears through the years but this is the first time they will actually move and interact. That meant they had to be accurate without any fudging. A friend sent me a link for a simple gear making program a while back and using it made it easy to create the DXF files for the gears.  I made five different sized gears all with the same sized teeth. These files were imported into EnRoute.

I only kept the outer ring of the gears as I would create the rest inside EnRoute.

Without changing the scale of the gear rings I created the vectors for five different gears. This is almost all the way through the process. The largest gear is not yet complete. I used the jigsaw tool to create the spokes, then deleted the spokes.

I built reliefs of the various gears with the teeth being 0.4 inches thick. The hubs and rings were built up from that point. Once the gears were complete I duplicated them and tool pathed them In this case the reliefs and offset cuts were done with the same tool - a 1/4" end mill.

Once all of the machining was done it was time to fasten the two halves of the gears together. Thin I'll do a little distressing with the die grinder. Then the fun part begins - pressing in the bearings and arranging them on the sculpture. I'll have to design some funky brackets to cut on the plasma cutter for that stage. Stay tuned...

Almost done

It's a bit hard to believe but we are at last nearing the end of the first phase of the NEB's fun World project. We have seven more posts to assemble and sculpt to finish this stage of the project. Through the last months we've designed hundreds of CNC files. We've cut up more than a hundred sheets of plywood, tons of sheet steel and many sheets of Precision Board. All those pieces have been fitted, welded, screwed and glued into place.

This project simply couldn't have ben accomplished without the help of the high tech materials like Precision Board, EnRoute software and our MultiCam CNC machines. It has been both challenging and fun!

As the crew finishes this job I am busy designing for the next phase. That too will require the help of these marvellous tools.

Quick installation

I love it when installations are painless and quick - just as we plan. The four signs for the Cultus Lake Boardwalk fell into this category. To install we measured thing up and marked the beams, then walked the signs up two ladders, positioned then and bolted them into place with lag bolts. It took less than five minutes per sign to do the installation.

The signs added a dash of colour like decorative icing on a fine cake.

Flying at the flywheel

The flywheel for the 'MARVELOUS MACHINE' was a fun little project. Creating the file took a number of steps but it wasn't overly difficult. The entire file was designed using EnRoute.

The spoke vectors looked a lot like giant tear drops I designed one, then duplicated it and flipped it. The two spokes were aligned and then grouped. These pairs of spokes were then duplicated rotated at intervals of 60 degrees, arranged and aligned around the wheel. 

The first relief to be created was the outer rim. I made it a flat relief at 1.5" tall.

Next up was the rounded inner rim. I created it as a separate relief using the dome tool.

After I created the relief I checked it in the front view and nudged it upwards until I was happy with the look.

The spokes were next, created once again using the dome tool. These too were checked in the front view and nudged upwards to suit.

The inner hub was created as a flat relief. I then created a new round vector and created a zero height relief. I then merged all of the reliefs to this relief.

I duplicated the relief and flipped it to create the back of the flywheel. then modified this new relief by creating two depressions to accommodate the mounting hardware.

To bore the hole for the shaft I created a zero height relief. This was then MERGED LOWEST with the flywheel relief.

The files were then ready for tool pathing. The routing was done in two passes. The first rough pass was done with a 3/8" ball nose bit with a 50% overlap while the finishing was done with a 1/8" ball nose bit at 80% overlap.

Because it was to be a moving part I machined the flywheel from forty point Precision Board.

Using EnRoute as a design tool

With the bowling alley now almost complete we are ready to move on to the next phase of the NEBs project. That is the Pub area. We had done some preliminary renderings last year. The primary element was the giant still. At that time they were going to dig out a section of the floor to create a lower level and then build a mezzanine level above. The tall still was to have been the centrepiece straddling both levels of the seating area. Those plans have been abandoned.

The still survived the changes but now needed to be shorter and located in a different place. We started with the CAD drawings of the pub area. I imported them into EnRoute and then did the new plans over top. Our new idea was to create decorative beams/arches from the back wall. They would come up to a row of posts which were in the same line as the still. The beams would serve as brackets for heavy industrial piping which would go from the still to the bar area.

Once I had the ideas worked out in scale I grabbed a screen capture. This was taken into PhotoShop to do my freehand rendering using different colours for the various elements and sections.

Once I had the ideas sorted out it was back to EnRoute to create a new scale drawing of the still and beam system.

A screen capture of the drawing was then used as the basis for the freehand rendering, once again done in PhotoShop using my iPad Pro and pencil.

The back expansion area got a slightly different style beam with a post on either end and the pipe down the middle. It too was redrawn freehand and coloured on the computer.

One more drawing was necessary for the presentation. That was a typical post with one of the pub signs attached. It matches the posts we created for the bowling alleys.

Paint, paint, paint!

The four signs for the Cultus Lake Boardwalk are now nearing completion. Each colour of the sign gets a minimum of three coats of paint to ensure a long life and fade resistance. That's a lot of cutting of the many colours! 

The ribbit ride sign now only needs one more blend coat of yellow paint on the lettering plus some eyeball details before it is declared done.

The three Cultus Lake Boardwalk signs need two more coats of blending on the letters plus three coats of white on the borders. Hopefully tomorrow has enough hours to get the job done. In any case by week's end we'll be bolting them into place up at the park.

Instant install

The new MultiCam tech centre and office in Langley, British Columbia opens on Friday. That meant it was time to do a special delivery today. Grant and I loaded their new sign nd a few tools into the back of the shop truck and we headed down the road. Kelsey was at the office eagerly waiting for us to arrive. I measured up the wall and located the studs while Grant brought in the tools. 

It took seconds to mount the bracket to the wall, making sure it was dead level. We then carefully brought the large dimensional sign into the office and hung it on the bracket. Kelsey was all smiles as we piled back into the truck and headed back to the shop.