Thread: Merry Christmas 2009

Tweet

Merry Christmas Everybody.
I recently added 3-d software to my CNC. My first projects were props for the Christmas musical at church last week. I know this is a hot rod site, but I just had to show off the capabilities of this new software. I had a blast putting these together.
First were the angel wings. complete with an aluminum harness made with the E-wheel I built last fall, along with some help from the bead roller & press.

Harness welded, bead rolled edge to stiffen up the .080 aluminum. Bead rolled tabs to be embedded in the polystyrene wings to mount them to the harness.



After a test fit on the guy playing the angel, the harness didn't want to stay in place with the straps only, so I added a couple shoulder braces made from .080 aluminum. A bead down the center of the straps made them strong enough to hold the wings up, but were still pliable enough to bend to fit his shoulders.



They stayed in place for all 4 performances.

Thanks Roger. But wait...there's more......

Next was the sign for the entrance to the parking lot.

I made this out of Styrofoam. Pretty flimsy stuff for outside use, so I laminated it to a sheet of OSB to stiffen it up, then cut it on the CNC.



Cut the main lettering & dove out separately to be applied after the main sign was painted.





Installed

Next was a 16'x4'x12'' "earth" to cover the center stage steps.

The last prop was a life sized camel. This was a challenge especially since I just got the software a week before Thanksgiving. It took about 200 hours. About 1/2 of that was labor & 1/2 machine time on the CNC.

I started out by taking a pic. of a ceramic camel from a nativity scene I did about 20 years ago. I took a left & right side photo & converted them to vector art. I then converted the vector art to this 3-d image. (this being the right side).


Being 7' tall x7' long x 32'' wide I had to slice the model into 2" slices so I could cut them out of 2" polystyrene foam. (the pink stuff from Menards).



Built an armature to hold the camel together.



Getting ready to join the left & right sides together.

All assembled and smoothed out with water putty. There was a fair amount out relief sculpting that had to be done as my CNC does not have a 4th axis.



In primer & ready for some color.



Left side done



Right Side Done.

Those are some very cool angel wings!