We've long wanted to get into the farm sign market for we are surrounded by thousands of farms. We did up some samples for our trade shows and put photos of these examples in our portfolio. Last week we finally saw the results of our marketing efforts. A fellow came up our drive and came into the shop. He had heard 'I were the guy to talk to about a quality dimensional sign.' I did up a design which he enthusiastically approved.
Next came the vector drawings, done in EnRoute. Most of the work on the sign would be done with the MultiCam. The routing file design and tool-pathing was done in less than an hour. The textures were generated with a bitmap in EnRoute.
I decided it would be quicker (and more fun) to carve the mountains by hand rather than creating a 3D file of them. The sign layers were created with cutout profiles which would minimize the hand carving. While I love to hand carve I also LOVE it when I can have our MultiCam to take the hard labor out of the process. The sign covered an entire 4' x 8' piece of Precision Board. The letters were done as separate prismatic 3D shapes to add extra dimension to the sign. They would be glued into shallow pockets routed into the face of the sign.
Once I was happy I tool-pathed the project and sent it to the MultiCam. The machine happily churned away while I other jobs. Next entry I'll show how we continued the project from this stage.
-dan
