ENROUTE ADVENTURES: A little sunshine

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

Sunday, September 30, 2012

A little sunshine

With the house now at lockup stage at long last it is time to get busy in the shop once more. We have plenty of cool projects waiting for us.

One of our projects is for a home prefabricator in Alberta. The preliminary design was hand drawn on my computer using PhotoShop and my digital drawing pad.

Once the design was approved we put measurements to paper and everything was submitted to the local authorities for permits. This seemed to take a long time but eventually we got through that process.

The sign will be built entirely in our shop, loaded onto a truck to move it to the site which is about a thousand miles distant. They will unload it and place it onto steel pilings and then weld it into place. A sturdy welded steel frame was the first order of business. Everything else will come off of this. If you look at the picture closely you can see the stubby legs with the half inch thick steel plates under them. These will be securely welded to three pilings which will provide the support for the sign and make sure the frost does't move things around.

In the next week or so I'll be welding up the pencil rod sub structure for the sculpted rock work. I'll also be creating the routing files for the sun and the lettering which will be routed from 30lb Precision Board. I'll be using Heico LED lights and surface lighting on this project as well to make it highly visible at night.

Stay tuned...

-dan