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.

Tuesday 1 September 2015

Cupcake anyone?

Each of these miniature stores had to have 1 oversize element! Oversize to the scale of the store that is!
The cinema was to have an oversized popcorn container, the bakery a cupcake, and the candystore a gumball machine. Non of this is an off the shelf purchase, with the exception of the popcorn container!
The Dollar Store can be a treasure trove of parts for this kind of thing! I did find some plastic ice cream bowls, and a kids ladybug lantern!
At first you may say "Whaaaaat?"
The lantern I hacked strictly for the globe around the LED light. This will become the glass for the gumball machine.
I measured up the globe, and drew the vector outline in Corel, then imported those vectors into Hexagon. Using the vectors, I massed up the base of the gumball machine, to the size I needed it.
The base was cut in 2 halves, out of HDU.
A few coats of primer to seal up the HDU, and this is pretty much ready for paint!
The cupcake was the next animal! I quickly drew up the cupcake top in Hexagon, working from the inside diameter of the small ice cream bowl. This was also cut from HDU, and painted with acrylics. The cherry stem was a section of coat hanger wire, drilled into the top, and bent slightly.
While this was all goin' down, Jody was working on the final set piece, which was a section of curved roadway, with "grass" on each side, and matching sidewalk pads. This the outdoor scene for the toys.
The grass berms were hot-wire cut foam, then sanded smoothly into an undulating surface, ready to be flocked for grass.

8)
JWO