When I lent my services to a collegue who was working on a film about 12 years ago, I was introduced to the world of cnc. I remember watching this huge machining centre milling out a slab of mdf and turning it into a fantastic set of gears. I knew that it would have taken me hours to achieve the same thing with traditional power tools. I decided then that I would invest in a cnc router for my own business Oxenham Design. At that time I could turn on a computer, but even to check email seemed like a crazy set of operations. I persevered and learned every piece of relevant software I could get my hands on. I am now fortunate enough to be using Vectric's ASPIRE software, and Techno cnc routers, which has helped us to create some amazing projects, both in part, or in full. I thought that this blog would be a great place to share "behind the scenes" adventures with the software, materials and equipment we use, as well as the projects we build.

Tuesday 31 March 2015

I think I can, I think I can...........finish this job this year!

The front of the train barrel finally got all the little detail pieces attached. Including the dimensional sign for the front. The real train has this as well, although the scale of ours is quite a bit larger, just to make it stand out a bit! Although, funny story, the first version of this sign, I misspelled the word
prairie, and no-one noticed for 5 days. In fact, it was a friend whom had stopped by, that pointed it out! Stupid Jamie.

There was still a bit of underside work to finish up, so we put the whole assembly up on a couple of tables. It's pretty high already, to say nothing about the 4 more feet it will be sitting in the heart.
The very last step was to weld up the bracket that will bolt the bridge and the train together! That was a whole lotta crap working in that tight space!
Quite the monster from down around this height!
I had a few options for bringing the train whistle to life. But in the end, I decided to 3d print it. Who says 3d printing is "rapid prototyping"? Pfffff. HA HA! I do like his leaning back posture, and from the front, he kinda has "blowing cheeks"

I didn't even take the time to sand, and clean it up. I just went right to our 2 stage polyester primer, and applied it with a brush, because I didn't want to have to clean the spray gun for a tiny little bit of primer! Jody sanded it the next day, and it looked great!

All in all, he looks awesome!
8)
JWO







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