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

Friday, October 5, 2012

Making the sun shine


The giant sun for the Sunshine Homes sign was the next order of business. I created the vectors in EnRoute. The rectangle on the bottom will be used to cut off the round sun.


I used the dome tool and selected the constant height function. Since I would route the piece from a three inch thick Precision Board I entered a value of 2.6"  I would tweak it just under the final dimension of 3" (top surface of piece) at the last minute.


The rectangle was made into a relief of zero height.


Then I opened the merge function. I selected the circle first, then followed the prompts to merge LOWEST.




To get rid of the unwanted pieces of the relief I used the slice function, effectively slicing the bottom of the relief off.



As EnRoute does this it leaves the original relief intact. I selected this one and moved it off to the side.


The sun rays were cut in two layers with slots cut in one of the layers for a welded steel frame. The three layers would be laminated together.

-dan