At The Movies.

A while back, I remembered seeing a Han Solo in carbonite sculpture that caught my eye. It was made by a well known sign shop on the east coast and all I could think to myself was ” I could do that!”. Well, months went by, and I still never had the time to mess around with it. Then like usual, something popped up in the form of a prop we needed for the At The Movies series we put on at my church every summer. In the meetings, we ended up talking Star Wars and I knew it was my time to speak up.

Han in carbonite would be the perfect prop. So here it is.

I’ll be posting step by step pics of the process, so make sure you keep checking back. This is shaping up to be a fun one!!!!

Here is the 3D file we used for the carving. We used 18lb Precision Board and built the thickness via slices using Enroute Pro 5.1

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The entire sliced model was carved on our Multicam 3000 series router using 1/2″, 1/4″, and 1/8″ Ball End mill router bits.

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Here you can see the finished carved pieces. They are exceptionally smooth and accurate.
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Han is now awaiting his final mounting on the box that will be sculpted to look like the movie carbonite prop.

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Stay tuned for more progress pics!

-Jim

Published with permission from Synergy Sign & Graphics. Source.

Never Stop Learning!

This past week was a great week here at Synergy. I travelled to East Texas, PA to visit Smooth-On with my friends Derek & Sarah. We spent two days learning casting and mold making techniques with their products. Some of these new skills will undoubtedly end up in our signs.

It is amazing to see how to accomplish the same thing from many different angles. You remember the told saying “There is more than one way to skin a cat”. While I don’t advocate killing your pet cat, I do plan on learning every way to “skin” one.

Here are some awesome samples we were shown at the seminar.

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Another thing I was able to accomplish while at Smooth-On was to demo their wide range of epoxy clays. They have thick, thin, light-weight, and fire proof iterations of the product. We have been looking for a replacement for our current clay for a long time, and this stuff looks very promising.

While I don’t think you will see me on Face-Off anytime soon, the visit to Smooth-On was well worth the trip! I can’t wait to share what we create with all of you!

-Jim

Published with permission from Synergy Sign & Graphics. Source.

The New Multicam CNC Router is installed!

Towards the end of 2014, it had become abundantly clear to us that we had outgrown our Multicam 1000 series router. While it was a great machine that worked well for us for the last 6 years, we were asking a little too much of it with the demands of our 3D carvings. Now, don’t get me wrong, it worked flawlessly on the Teal project, Kc’s, and the FSRC sign, but we were looking for a little more speed and the ability to run 40hr CNC programs if we needed. After talking to Robert and Denis at Multicam Great Lakes, we decided to order a new machine. The machine arrived in late December and we spent the last 3 weeks running electrical, air, and dust collection lines

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The New Multicam CNC Router is installed!

Awesome new signage for Park Street Pizza!

Park Street Pizza is a GO! Rocky has done some amazing work on his building, so it’s time to finish it all off with some cool new signage. Over the next 4-5 weeks, you’ll see various new signs popping up. We’ll be making a one of a kind entry sign, a new logo sign for the end of the building, and we’ll be following that up with a gorgeous new road sign. For this project we’ll be utilizing tons of cool products. Modern Masters paints , Precision Board , real cedar posts and planking, and tons of carving on our Multicam 3000 series Router.

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Awesome new signage for Park Street Pizza!

The Victorian Suite. Installed

The owners of the Victorian Suite sent us final install pics over the weekend. We would like to share them with you. This project was an example of what we can do on a tight budget. The client elected to install the project himself so that could save on install costs

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The Victorian Suite. Installed