More Than Signs II

It was a hot, humid and rainy florida afternoon; her long, sumptuous jet black hair flowed gently over her...OOPS! Sorry, wrong blog! er... ahem...

The Cook here again, I know I promised a woodworking post next, but that project is still in progress and I couldn't wait to put up another post. Blogger fever I guess.

Today's project is an interesting one as always; a customer approached us inquiring about our mad CNC routing skillz, he wanted an acrylic cover for a grain processor's controller, he wanted it quick, and we, always looking towards helping our customers, took the challenge.

He brought us clean, clear and detailed instructions and measurements, always a must...

Well, maybe the plans weren't as clean and clear but they were detailed enough, and we set off to get a scale-to-size drawing on the computer.

We are constantly looking out for the latest developments on equipment and software in the industry, and strive to use the best tools to get the best results on our projects; this allows us to quickly get precise files to work with, such as the one above; once the main plan was laid and checked, we brought it onto our CNC routing software.

The final product called for 90 degree bends on acrylic to form a box, so we had to make angled scores on the piece in order to make the bends and the walls of the box as straight as possible.

To make these scores, we used a V-Carve bit, which you can see in this EXTREME ACTION CLOSE UP!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once the grooves were carved and cleaned, it was time to make the main shape cut, this is what the piece looked like once the router finished cutting:

Now is time to get the bends!; since this was a small box (no project too small!) we used a table heater to heat the acrylic to the point were it is soft enough to bend but not so hot that it would bubble up

This is done by pure feeling, there really is no set rule on when the acrylic is ready (I personally like to keep it a bit on the stiff side and let the carryover heat do the rest) so, when the moment comes, all you have to do is hold one side and bend the piece into position, as you can see on the following fancy-pants video, enjoy:

Nice eh?, this is repeated as many times as needed, in this case 4 folds did the trick, and here is the final result:

Working with acrylic is always a treat, you get really clean results, and the material is sturdy and durable, comes in a wide variety of colors and can be assembled and combined with a host of materials; it is great for sinage and protective enclosures where visibilty is needed, such as this project or displays for literature or product...

This is it from me today, I promise the next post is woodworking!, and it will knock your socks off... fo' sho'... I'll see you next time, I'm off to finish that post on that other blog.... BYE!