When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIRE software, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Saturday 24 March 2012

This texture rocks!

I didn't get to the shop today as some other things had come up pretty last minute. But I did get to model the 'ROCKS!" section of the display. I thought I would walk you through this portion as well. There isn't much that is different from the "Texture" portion. The process is identical:
I imported the vectors from Corel, although I could have just as easily done this part all in Aspire. I also want this to be kind of curvy as well. So I drew up the 3 vectors that I will use for the 2 rail sweep.
This wavy bend will make the word far more interesting to look at. It's the small details that add to the overall finished piece. A very small step to do, but well worth the pre-thought in the end.
Selecting the outside edge of the text boundary, I raised it up a little. And as I selected the "add" function when I was creating this component, it will get "added' to the base relief I created with the 2 rail sweep.
I selected the final text vectors and chose to slightly dome the tops of them. Not a lot, just enough so they're not so blah looking.
Back to my textured bitmap that I used on the word "TEXTURE". Might as well keep it consistent! I kept the height of the texture to around the same height as before. Around .180".

The final step is to trim it all up! I selected the outermost vectors and deleted any of the model outside of this.
Voila! Done. All in all, these steps only took a total of 3 minutes to do. That's what makes Aspire so great. And it was fun too!
I might go in on Sunday and cut these pieces on our Techno cnc. I am looking forward to figuring out the gearing to spin the upper portion.
8)
JO

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