The ‘H’ is a combination of various shapes which were then MERGED HIGHEST to the base relief as a last step.

The ‘O’ and the ‘P’ were created at the same tile as the gears were similar. The ‘O’ gear then got a raised hub with a hole drilled into it by using the merge lowest tool and a zero height relief of that size.

That completed the lettering and I was happy with the result. Then it was on to the border – a simple domed and raised border. I built it as a separate file as well as the rivets, then merged highest.

The gear was the last relief I created. All of the reliefs were then merged highest onto a zero height relief. This made the file ready to tool path and route.

Give the file a try – it’s great fun!

-dan

The gear sign has lain dormant for a week while I was very busy with other things. Today I finally had time to work a little on it but in last week’s business I must of stuck the file somewhere that I simply couldn’t remember. So I had to build another.

Then it was on to the tool lettering. The first was the ‘W’. I built one leg and then duplicated, rotated and flipped it.

The ‘O’ and the ‘R’ were pretty simple,using many of the same steps we used to make the gear for the background border. The vise grips look really complex but the reality is they are not. I first used the vector drawing tool to very quickly draw our the rough pieces we needed. The most important aspect of this is to get the right number of nodes. I then used the vector editing tool to tweak the placement of the nodes and also form the curves. In a few minutes I had everything I needed.

The ‘S’ was dead simple and then it was on to the ‘H’ Once more I simply thought about the shapes I wanted and then built up the shapes I needed. The create relief tools will do the rest. Once all the different shaped reliefs are built I’ll combine them in a hurry.

For the ‘P’ I duplicated and resized the gear I had created for the ‘O’ The handle was built of smaller shapes which were then combined. Lettering was added as a last step.

 The lettering was then resized so they looked good together. The last step was to resize and place them onto the base plate vectors.

The rectangles were built using the rounded corners mode. To create the teeth of the gear I used the multiplier took checking the appropriate boxes to get the gears to wrap around the circle and align correctly.

I then used the chamfer vector tool to round off both the inside and outside of the  gear teeth.

Lastly I added the rivets to the inside of the rectangular frame.

Next time I’ll be building the custom tool and gear letters. Stay tuned…

-dan