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First steps
Since this project was different to the last one in regards to me having freedom over what I made, The first step was to start brainstorming ideas. For me this came from researching things I thought would look cool on a sign, and I started on Pinterest for that. Some of my searches during this process included general things such as "2d art" and "2d logo art" but I decided to look more into Snoopy as I thought making a sign of him would be fun. Below are some of the photos I almost ended up using
Making a Roadmap
Our next step in the process was to make a roadmap detailing just what and how we were going to do things. I admit looking back I should've provided more detail within my roadmap and if this project was more complex I would've likely struggled, this is something I will expand upon next time
The Illustrator process
My next step was to bring my photo of snoopy into Illustrator. This involved the simple process of copy and pasting the image into illustrator. The more complex part came after this, I had to then use the image trace feature to smooth snoopy from pixels into lines. This meant that after ungrouping the lines and getting rid of all the annoying stuff, the image was ready for illustrator. From here I exported the file as a DXF and brought it into illustrator.
Fusion 360: Pt 1
Bringing the DXF file into fusion by opening it left us with our glorious 2d snoopy model, the only issue was that snoopy wasnt going to be 2d. A large section of this project was the fact that our sings would have to consist of multiple depths. This meants I would have to extrude the edges and feautures of snoopy, or more importantly, the center of him backwards. I extruded the white part of snoopy by precisely -.25", which is half of the woods thickness. This meant we could still work from below the Z axis in fusion, but had the depths we needed for snoopy.
Making a stock
Since snoopy was going to be cut out of a stock, having one within fusion was a rather relevant detail. To create a stock, I created a sketch in the shape of a rectangle around snoopy, giving it dimensions of 10x12 to match the sign, and then set an origin point to work with for the machine
A cut below the rest: Toolpaths
The arguably most important part of this process was to come next, creating the toolpaths. The toolpaths are obviously the things that determine what actually gets cut, so they're fairly important. To make them we had to go into the Create toolpath menu, select the pockets that we wanted to cut, and then make sure we created our toolpaths correctly.
The steps I followed throughout this process were as follows
Create 2d pocket and 2d contour, leave contour last
Use tool 6 for 2d pocket
Go to geometry tab, select
Turn off stock to leave, turn on multiple depths
Set max roughing step down to ½ of the bits diameter
Create 2d contour
Select Tool 8
Select edge in 2d contour, always bottom edge
Select bottom heights, offset by -.02
From here we simulated and made sure that everything looked good for the CNC machine using the "simulate with machine" tab. Once it did we were digitally ready for the CNC machine.
Spray paint, Paint masks, and Green Tape
Now that the digital side of things is all squared away, It was time to get the physical side set. Because the higher layer of my sign was going to be black, this meant spray painting the whole stock black before we did anything else. In the future though we we're going to need to paint the middle of the stock white, so to allow this we put a paint mask on the snoopy. We took a strip of paint mask that was comfortably bigger than my stock, cut it, and then used a squeegee to hold it down. From here we taped the entire OTHER side of the stock, and super glued it to a layer of tape on the CNC.
Running the Job
Now that everything was ready to go and my stock was glued to the CNC Machine, I exported the job as an NC file and sent it to the CNC. I then loaded my job on the machine, set the X, Y, and Z, axis', made sure the compressor was on, and hit go.
Snoopy!!!
Everything on the CNC went well, and we were left with a good looking, partially painted (covered in tape and paint masks) snoopy!
Coloring the middle
My original plan was to give snoopy's body some white spray paint. I did do this, but the paint looked a little bit iffy, this meant I decided to use epoxy. I went into the woodshop and mixed four pumps of epoxy, hardener, and some white dye. I then went and poured them inside of snoopy's body, and let them set, which gave us our final snoopy before we clear coated him.
Giving Snoopy a friend
My final part of the project was to create a mini-Woodstock on the Laser cutter to match snoopy. I followed the same process as my snoopy in illustrator but only kept the outside lines and made them cut lines so I could cut out yellow acrylic into the shape of woodstock. To add a final detail I pulled some sunglasses out of the original illustrator file and laser cut that out of black acrlyic. Finally, I super glued the sunglasses to wood stock, and we had a finished product.
The final product
Overall I was incredibly happy with how this project turned out, I think my Snoopy and Woodstock both look awesome and how I invisioned them to look. I look forward to using all I learned from the project into future projects.
Reflection
The major steps in going from a 2d illustrator model to a cut CNC part and then back relied largely on bringing 2d and 3d things back and forth. This meant exporting DXF files from Illustrator into Fusion and then making it 3d through extrusion, but then going back to using a DXF file made from a sketch for all things involving Illustrator.
This project taught me how to apply a paint mask using a squeegee but also that it's important to plan to leave time to apply several coats if a layer of paint is crucially important.
I thought that the most complicated part of the CAD software was creating the toolpaths, I had quite literally never done this so it was completely foreign. This meant I had to take extra care to make sure everything was correct as it was NOT second nature.
Some of the lessons I learned throughout this project is that a. Epoxy needs to be mixed first and that B. I have to get all the pieces of dust out of a cut piece before I paint it.
Throughout the process of making my piece, I had to use Illustrator, the laser cutter, fusion, The CNC machine, as well as some epoxy & super glue.
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