WELCOME!


It is hard to believe that it was only seven years ago I witnessed a CNC router in action for the very first time. I was fascinated and simply had to have one! Although I had been in the creative end of the three dimensional sign business for most of my life I didn't really know what I would do with one - but I just knew it could do fantastic stuff.

Through extensive research I quickly found out that with the relative simplicity of EnRoute, CNC routers were capable of just about anything imaginable. This journal will chronicle that journey to date and continue each week with two or three entries as we continue to explore just what is possible with this wonderful software... -dan

Monday, May 7, 2012

Mighty Moose sign


The Mighty Moose sign is to be a double sided sign. The owner asked that it be old weathered wood, which suits the theme perfectly. First up we created the lettering. I added an outline around the letters in EnRoute using the offset drawing tool.


I then drew a rough broken board using a bitmap of the driftwood from the TEXTURE MAGIC collection. I created a flat relief and then used the bitmap to add some woodgrain. 


Then I selected the virtual sculpting tool. I would use it to carve into the ends of the wood background. to give the wood a lot more character,



I sized the lettering to fit on the background I sized the lettering for the l=panel and then created a duplicate of the background. I flipped it to create the back piece of the sign. I then duplicated the lettering and positioned it on the second copy.


The outline of the letters was created as flat reliefs. I positioned the reliefs vertically on relation to the woodgrain and then merged highest to the wood background.


The MIGHTY MOOSE letters was created using the bevel tool. The bevelled lettering was created with a 0.2" vertical base.


The letters of ice cream were created with a slight rounded top.



With that the files were ready for tool patching and routing.




Stay tuned as I route and glue them up on top of the moose.

-dan