I’ve long believed that if we come up with better ideas as we are building something the plan needs to be adjusted. Sometimes it means a little more time or materials but the whole idea of doing this kind of work is to do the very best we can possibly do. After the weekend off I came back into the shop to work on the lectern.
The upper portion and motor base of the lectern stand was a challenging piece to build. There were a number of ways I could have handled it but I chose to do it with a combination of domed reliefs and one mesh. The piece we were building today was shaped a bit like a funnel with a horizontal tube in the middle and a lightbulb shaped thing on the top. An axle would go through the top part for the big gears and through the horizontal tube (‘motor’) for the smaller gears
Building rather complex objectss is something I enjoy immensely. As I designed I knew from experience just how I would accomplish building the files in EnRoute, how I would machine them with our MultiCa, and how they would then be assembled and finished. Because Precision Board has certain limitations as far as structural strength I knew just how we would weld up a steel frame to go inside. Because the lectern would have to travel many, many thousands of miles and stand up to use in many trade shows we had to get it right from the start. As I started building the files I first decided in my mind how many pieces we would build and how these pieces would be layered.
Building rather complex objectss is something I enjoy immensely. As I designed I knew from experience just how I would accomplish building the files in EnRoute, how I would machine them with our MultiCa, and how they would then be assembled and finished. Because Precision Board has certain limitations as far as structural strength I knew just how we would weld up a steel frame to go inside. Because the lectern would have to travel many, many thousands of miles and stand up to use in many trade shows we had to get it right from the start
We’ve owned a MultiCam CNC router for about eight years and have figured out how to make it do some pretty neat stuff. It wasn’t long until the makers of the machine noticed. In the years since we’ve cooked up some pretty cool samples for them and have been asked to do some presentations at the International Sign Association world conference on MultiCam’s behalf. This year we were asked to go to the conference in Las Vegas once more in April and do a series of presentations in their booth.
In the first two blogs in this series about picking a CNC router I discussed learning about router specs, picking the ones we needed and then selecting a manufacturer and dealer to supply our machine. I hear a great deal of talk about routers and how much they should cost. Some of my friends have bought routers from China. Service isn’t part of the package.
In my last post I talked about discovering CNC routers and wading through the technical specs and language to determine which machine was best for our needs. Once I had determined the specifications of the machine we needed it was time to go shopping. Our new CNC router would have the following specifications: Heavy duty steel construction throughout.
I witnessed a CNC router for the first time at the International Sign Show back in 2006. I was amazed to see the machine going back and forth cutting so very fast. The machines I saw at that show were all doing cuts and not 3D. Few people were doing 3D back then. Over the course of the three day show I looked at many routers and talked with the software folks at length about what these machines were capable of
As the New Year rolls in we like to look back at what we’ve done and also to the future, hoping we can do things even better. This blog is the same. I look forward to hearing comments and suggestions from our readers.