The Vault

Well that's done.

This took 25 minutes on the machine.

Material cutting area is 24 x 50 x 1 inch. My machine capacity is 51 x 51 --- plenty of room.
With HDU 1" means 1" not 3/4" like wood

I still need to do some final cleanup such as removing the tabs and just general trimming and light sanding.
HDU is SUPER easy to work with. There is no wood that I am aware of that is as easy to work as HDU.
Sanding is no finer than 100 grit.

All of these letters will be getting painted.

Next up will be the Alupanel substrate pieces. I will need to be using the tile tools in Vectric as the panels are larger than my machine.

 
Well I made a boo boo
The awning signs were supposed to be 2 different sizes of text (Music Hall & Pub) The larger was supposed to be 5" and the smaller supposed to be 4.8" tall. I did all 5" tall by mistake. I was going to remake the smaller ones, but, I can make it work with all 5" text.

Sooo - we move on to the next step, Alupanel.

Alupanel is a clad material. There is a solid PVC core with Aluminum clad faces. One face is Gloss white and the opposite face is Satin White. I always choose the satin face.

Vault Awning build-4 ALUPANEL.jpg


I will be using a full sheet of 4x8x1/4 sheet. My machine is 51" x 51" so it is not possible to do the entire sheet in one shot. When I set up my shop for the CNC machine I made sure to get the spindle positioned such that I could feed a single 12 foot panel through the machine. I have done a 10 foot panel and a few 8 foot panels, so I am ready for this next step.

In Vectric there is a tool for "tiling". That is to break the toolpath into segments called tiles. I could do it with 2 4x4 tiles, but I prefer using smaller tiles. I will use 34" long tiles x 48" wide.

Vault Awning build-5 ALUPANEL.jpg Vault Awning build-6 ALUPANEL.jpg Vault Awning build-7 ALUPANEL.jpg

I will be engraving the locations of all the text. I will be roughing the places where the text goes and I will be using Lord 310 2 part epoxy. That stuff bonds the HDU to the Alupanel - FOREVER.

The curved lines that look like parenthesis are location for the oval that "THE VAULT" text will be located. The two of the smaller ovals are on this sheet. I could not fit the larger oval, that will follow after this sheet.

When I do the machining video, it will become almost clear. At assembly it will all get clear.
 
Very interesting to watch, I've been mostly holding off on questions because 90% of the time you answer them on subsequent post/videos :)

I am, however, wondering if you do anything special to minimize parallax errors when shifting between tiled sections? It naively seems that you'd want to have the side alignment blocks carefully matched to the corresponding axis movement on the CNC, but maybe I'm over thinking it.

One note on the hardboard. I used it for evenly applying pressure across a wide area on a rather weird project that I think I posted here a couple years ago (giant road roller ink print) and we found there was some measurable thickness variance on some of the pieces, especially towards the edges. This was cheaper hardboard (on a severe time and $ budget so we kind of took what we could get from the home store as we discovered we needed over a dozen sheets at like 7:00PM for the next morning when several hundred people were going to arrive to observe the spectacle). It wasn't enough to substantially affect the piece we were doing (or at least was far from the dominating factor haha), and I think where you're mostly using it as a spoil board here it should also be fine within the variance we saw. I could see it being a problem though where you were doing more non-through cuts where the depth was really critical or you could end up with a bit of "edge flap" due to poor support maybe (a downcut bit would probably? minimize that?). Most of the pieces were fine, but it is something to watch out for, especially on the edges of the board.
 
I should do a video on how I do the alignment with the blocks. In the meantime I will try to explain.

I have a laser pointer that is mounted in the spindle that is designed for this intended purpose. With the sheet of material on the machine bed I can run the laser pointer along the edge of the sheet and adjust as needed until the laser pointer is equal position along the edge of the sheet for the full 51" length of the "Y" axis. I then clamp the sheet down and place the blocks against the edge of the sheet. Gotsta make sure the pressed hardboard is not protruding beyond the sheet where the blocks go. In that way, the blocks are perfectly aligned to the axis of the machine.

I didn't measure the hardboard for variation, but it is insignificant for this operation. Yes, just a spoilboard. I do have a problem holding a large sheet like this. Clamping with the angle iron helps but the sheet still tends to bow up in the middle. Again, it not critical for this operation as the engraving is going to be covered when I epoxy the letters in place. I don't have a good way to clamp in the middle - YET.

A full table with vacuum clamping would be nice, BUT. Good vacuum clamping on a 4' x 4' area with zones and a vacuum pump large enough to handle would cost as much or more than my entire machine. I know Carol did some stuff with vacuum and we talked about it when she stayed with me for a Family visit in N.H. I have a vacuum nice pump, but smallish. I have made vacuum pods, successfully. I even have a set of Rockler pods. Some day I will come up with a system.

Thank you for commenting. I love the way you think and the way you dig into the thoughts.
 
OK - NEXT
Onto the Main Sign parts

Main Vault U with door.jpg

This is for the main sign
It is 33 inches tall and 33 inches wide by 2.5" thick
I don't have any 2.5 inch thick so I will glue up a 1.5 inch thick and a 1 inch thick piece.
Gorilla glue is best as it is a urethane glue and the material is High Density Urethane.
Wood glue does not adhere to this material.
 
Hoooo Boy

I have a lot of work into this.

Customer just told me to put a Hold on this.

They ( he and his partners) are reconsidering the design. They will pay me for the work I have into this, and they want me do build the new design.

Nice to get paid, but I really wanted to finish this and get it on display. I hate to waste materials and there is a LOT of material here.

Oh well - onward.
 
Customer just told me to put a Hold on this.
When I still did computer consulting/custom programing that was an ongoing problem. In that business it was nice to get paid for what you finished much less what the customer decided they didn't want finished (I got a lot better at cash up front and incremental payments, but even then got burned a few times pretty good into the 5 digit range).

Sounds like this crew is looking pretty good in that regard at least.. hopefully. We'll keep our fingers crossed :crossed:

I also have a bit of trouble anymore (always did, but I'm more aware of the problem now) with contract type work.. I have enough trouble figuring out how to get what's in my head down much less trying to translate what's in someone else's head into reality. I reckon you're probably a lot better at that than I am from what I've seen (maybe just more exceeding expectations" there (y) ;))
 
Well - I got just recieved a request to continue with this sign. I kept every single piece of what I made so far. They paid in full - materials and labor for all the work I did. I really only want one big job per year and this is certainly a big job.

I am super busy right now with some house projects so it is going to be a bit later on.

I will just continue this post as I go through the job.

I am glad I posted this thread, it will help me to remember where I was at.

What they (the Vault owners) did was to buy a resteraunt 3 miles down the road from me.
It was a GREAT resteraunt but the previous owners retired and closed.
Tears flowed as it was a truly great place and everyone missed it.
Always PACKED on the Friday thru Sunday - and bust during the week.
So they bought it, remodeled it and created another GREAT place.
They even named it and themed it after the town.
SWEET

Stay tuned - more to come.
 
Thank you Vaughn.

I have the rest of the text for the awning sign.

Looking at the sign in my first post above, this text goes inside the oval of THE VAULT with the "U" in the middle.
The HDU is 1" thick
I will be using 2 cutters
1/16 long end mill
3/16 long end mill

The remaining text will be done after this text, again in 1" HDU.

View attachment 119234

The toolpaths on the right side

The text is "merged" with Vectric, but I manually optimized to save 2" x 24" of HDU
thoroughly enjoy the write up. You optimize the layout vs. the nesting feature in the software. You feel you can do better than the software?
 
thoroughly enjoy the write up. You optimize the layout vs. the nesting feature in the software. You feel you can do better than the software?
Yes I can. The nesting is good, but the human mind is better. I do it a lot, try yhr nesting first, then try to make it better to optimize the material. Sometimes I can, sometimes not. I am a cheap yankee and I want to get the most out of every square inch. At the very least get the best piece of scrap in the end that I can reuse later.
 
Well OK - here we are. I am ready to get back on this job and get it finished. I am not going to take on any more big jobs like this. If I didn't have anything else to do it would be great, but I just have more on my worklist for home projects and I am not good at meeting any reasonable delivery times. Maybe after I finish the work on the outside of my house and finish my kitchen remodel and refurbishing the rooms inside my house. Then again I want to make small stuff not big stuff. I can honestly say, for anyone that wanted to make money making signs, certainly, there is some great opportunity in doing so.

 
Well it's looking really good so far. looking forward to the continuation!

I'm sure there will be a some folks who will be disappointed they won't get an opportunity to get a sweet sign like this made by you, but I certainly understand where you're at on that one :)
 
I made the 4 letters today, programming more.

I figured that retirement meant - try it, if you like it keep it - if you don't like it, don't do it. Well, I do like it, but I need to try something else too. Also, this will pay for my new computer.
 
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