Black Forest - Part 4

In our last instalment, we looked at building the Black Forest sign in EnRoute. Now we will take a quick peek at how we put it together.

The sign was routed in seven layers of Precision Board HDU. The two main faces and the top trim were cut from 2" thick material, while the balance was done using 1.5" thick material.

As soon as the pieces came off the CNC router, we mocked them up to see how they looked together. We almost always do this — it helps us to plan for the next steps (and it just feels good to see our progress)!

After this, we propped up the pieces outside and gave them a good pressure wash to get rid of the fine dust leftover from the routing process. This dust can prevent a secure gluing. (These days we use compressed air to accomplish this task.)

Once the pieces were clean, the next order of business was to weld up a rectangular steel frame that would be laminated inside the sign.

High density urethane is very sturdy (particularly the 30 lb. variety), however it doesn’t have any structural strength. To overcome this limitation, we incorporate steel frames into all our signs.

In this case, we cut out half round shapes by each location for the mounting studs. This gave us room to weld the half inch bars in place “in situ” after drilling holes from the sides to insert the solid steel rods.

After this we glued our pieces of HDU up. We used plenty of countersunk screws to hold the many layers together until the glue dried.

Before we go any further we need to even up the sign’s edges with the die grinder. After that we will weld on the sign’s bracket so we can fasten the sign to a temporary stand in order to work on it safely.

In our next instalment, we will start work on the knight that will stand in the oval.

Glazing Brick

There are four basic steps of theme painting — base coat, blend coat, glaze & dry brush. Not every project calls for every technique, but, as it happens, the brick work at the Hazelnut Inn uses all four. This short video explains how we add the brick’s glaze and dry brush coats.

Black Forest - Part 3

The black forest sign is to be routed from multiple layers of 30 lb. Precision Board HDU (high density urethane). At the time we built this sign, 2" was the practical limit for layer thickness — this was on account of length of the bits we had on hand. Thus, when we started thinking about this file the first step was to decide where the layers would begin and end. This instalment will go over that process…

It is important to note that EnRoute is a robust program: it gives users many options when creating files. Often these diverging paths lead to the same place. So, you should understand that the way we completed this task is not the only way to accomplish a file like this.

The first thing we did was to create a “zero height relief” of the final shape I wanted for the crown molding. This is a relief (a surface) with no thickness — if that is a little hard to wrap your head around you can think of it as having the thickness of a piece of paper.

Next, we used the bevel tool to create a relief twice as wide as we needed. Later, we will merge it to the zero height relief that hides under it to save only the shape we need.

After this this, we created the flat, top and bottom, parts of the molding.

We like to build all of the pieces separately and then merge them to create the final shape as a last step.

Next, the egg shapes were created using the dome relief tool. Then we raised them up (in the z axis) until they were right near the top of the molding.

The rest of the sign was built in the same fashion as the top molding, one piece at a time until all was right. Then, using the “combine tool,” it all was combined together. (We kept a copy of the original vectors to add more pieces later as needed.)

The three quarter view gives us a better idea of how the sign will look when it is routed.

The inside oval (a reverse dome) will be routed from the inner layer. Also, we still have to plan for the steel structure that will go inside the sign. Space for the steel will be routed into this piece.

The sections with lettering will be routed from 1.5" HDU and glued on later.

It's almost time to put this sign on the CNC and let it do it's magic!