Naturopathic Clinic - Part 1

This particular sign was for a doctor’s clinic. The clinic was housed in a historic old farmhouse — now in the centre of town. The sign needed to reflect that heritage and be respectful of the doctor's profession. We opted for a more traditional sign than our normal fare. It would be perched on a river stone base, symbolic of the natural approach to medicine this doctor practiced.

Dan created the file in EnRoute, using our sandblasted woodgrain texture bitmap to create the texture. The lettering is beveled and the logo domed for maximum impact. These two elements will, of course, be gilded. The sign’s colours will mirror the historic building. The sign will be routed in multiple payers and then laminated over a welded steel frame. The face of the sign is to be routed from 1.5" 30 lbs. Precision Board HDU for maximum effect and durability.

Name Tag 002: Doug

This particular Workshop name plaque was to have a hidden message. Our friend, Doug, loves weathered metal with rivets and that also happens to be one of our specialties! He also claims to be a member of the 'Blind Magicians of the Orient' — whatever that is. Dan decided this name plaque would look like it had been salvaged from a derelict ship. It would be slightly warped and some of the rivets would be missing; the same might be said of Doug of course. The raised rivets would spell 'MAGIC' — in braille. As always, Dan did a quick sketch in his book to work out the basics of the name plaque’s design.

Next he created a vector file and then a 3D file in EnRoute. Once he had created the flat reliefs, he imported a bitmap texture from our Texture magic: Classic Collection. EnRoute reads the shades of white, grey and black and assigns them height values depending on their value. When adding to a relief, white is highest, grays in between and black stays low. As you can see, this file creates a wave when it is done.

The rivet were simple domed reliefs and the lettering was a flat relief.

As always, Dan routed it from 30 lbs. Precision Board high density urethane (HDU).

Dan tool pathed the file in two passes. The first rough pass was 3/8" ball nose bit. The final pass was done using a 1/8" ball nose bit. He ran our CNC router at 300 inches per minute. The file took about an hour to complete. This will be a fun piece to paint and age properly!

Name Tag 001: Robin

One of the things we like to do for our workshops is to create custom name plaques for each attendee. We try our best to create a name plate that is related in some way to each person.

For instance, one of our students was finishing her master’s degree. For her name plaque an image of brain came to mind. We would wrap her name over it for her panel. We tested out the idea with a quick concept sketch.

Then it was on to creating the vectors we needed to build the files in EnRoute. The brain was a simple domed oval shape. We then added to this relief with the two halves of the brain. A bitmap texture file from our Texture Magic: Classic Collection called 'WORMS' formed the brain in an instant. The lettering outline was made into a relief, then modified with an oval of the same size as the brain and domed a similar amount. Using the side view of the reliefs we adjusted everything until it looked right. The base for the panel was created separately with a chamfer, then everything was merged to create one relief. The domed lettering was added to the relief as a last step.

We used a 3/8" ball nose bit for the rough pass with a 50 % overlap and 0.1" offset. The final pass was with a tapered 1/8" ball nose bit and an 80% overlap. Both tools were run at 300 inches per minute. The rough pass was accomplished in less than 10 minutes. The final pass came in at a little less than an hour to finish.