While the MultiCam was whittling the sun I was welding the finished letters onto the sign base.  The sign started to look pretty massive in the shop.

I used the dome tool and selected the constant height function. Since I would route the piece from a three inch thick Precision Board I entered a value of 2.6″  I would tweak it just under the final dimension of 3″ (top surface of piece) at the last minute.

The rectangle was made into a relief of zero height.

Then I opened the merge function. I selected the circle first, then followed the prompts to merge LOWEST.

To get rid of the unwanted pieces of the relief I used the slice function, effectively slicing the bottom of the relief off.

As EnRoute does this it leaves the original relief intact. I selected this one and moved it off to the side.

The sun rays were cut in two layers with slots cut in one of the layers for a welded steel frame. The three layers would be laminated together.

-dan

I had great plans to glue up a set of letters first thing in the morning using every available clamp I had. Then this afternoon I could remove the clamps and get a second set glued up. Yeah, right. Life isn’t alway like that. At least not my life.

I would use Coastal Enterprises PB BOND-240 glue. It is similar to Gorilla glue, a one-part glue activated with a spritz of water but does not bubble up or expand as much making for a neater job.

I did manage to get the first set glued and clamped up but not until after supper.  🙂

The Sunshine Homes lettering was relatively simple. I would route them in two layers with a half round groove routed in the middle so a steel rod frame could be laminated into the center of each letter with rods  protruding from the bottom to weld into he sign base. As usual we started with the vectors.

Into the center of each letter I positioned a 3/4″ wide vector. By routing a half round slot into the back the 5’8″ rod would drop between the layers.

The letters were positioned on a 4′ x 8′ panel, then duplicated and flipped to create the tops.

The files were routed from 30 lb Precision Board in two passes. The centers were done as a fill using a 3/* ball nose bit and with an 80% overlap. They were then cut out using a 3/8″ cutter.

The Sunshine Homes sign is coming along nicely. Today I sourced a 12″ x 12″ x 4″ waterproof electrical box to house the transformer for the low voltage LED wiring. It was fastened to the back of the sign frame. Then I started welding up the pencil rod frame to which we will attach the galvanized lath and then sculpt the fiberglass reinforced concrete rock work. I welded up a grid with the bars spaced about four inches apart – plenty strong for this project. It is all braced back to the heavy structural frame.