Snowball
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2019 5:03 am
First, I’d like to blame Todd and his Penguin Welcome sign for this Snowball!!!
My Daughter-In-Laws birthday is coming up and I was trying to figure out what to buy/make her. After finding Todd’s Penguin Welcome sign I figured this was perfect. A year ago, my son and daughter-in-law started a fitness center called “Rockhopper Strong Fitness”, their logo is the Rockhopper Penguin… So, I figured I’d take Todd’s sign, model the head of a Rockhopper Penguin and I’d be done…. Found a cute charature of a Rockhopper that I could model and modeled it in Aspire. After modeling the head, I added it to Todd’s sign. I’m done! Before I could cut the sign, we left on a trip before Christmas. On our first night on the on the road we were staying at a hotel that had an LED dry erase board next to the check-in desk. This got me to thinking (the snowball starts to roll). Instead of a static Welcome sign why not a sign she could use to Welcome people and write messages about special trainings, etc.… So, I got on line and ordered an LED dry erase board that would be at home when we returned for our trip. I got to thinking about how I was going to attach the flippers and head to the sign. I decided a frame would do the trick. Not wanting just, a boring square frame I decided a “rock” frame would be much better. So now I’m modeling a rock frame (snow ball is getting bigger and gaining momentum).
When we got hope the LED dry erase board was waiting, now I could get the measurements I needed to finish modeling the rock frame. After modeling the frame, adding the flippers and Rockhopper head, I discovered several problems. The frame was too long for my CNC, no problem I’ll just tile the Y axis. It’s also too wide for my CNC. I don’t want to just tile the X axis as that would put a hard-cut edge to the two halves and I figured that would be hard to hide when I put the two halves together (that snowball is now out of control). I decided to make two separate jobs so I could control how and where the cuts would be between the two halves. But wait there’s more…. The sign is too tall for the Z axis on my CNC (snow ball is getting huge). I figured out if I sliced the Rockhopper head that would take care of the Z axis issue (job # 3).
I wanted to keep the sign as light as possible, so I decided to use 2” pink foam board from the box store and back it with 5mm lauan plywood to give it a bit more rigidity. I’ve used this technique before, and it works well. Outside of an error in Y axis alignment that I made on the backside the two halves cut just fine and so did the top slice of the face.
After gluing the halves and face together it was time to sand, fill and paint.
The Snowball took a lot longer to finish that I was planning to spend on this project, but I can’t complain about the end results. Hope she likes it…
My Daughter-In-Laws birthday is coming up and I was trying to figure out what to buy/make her. After finding Todd’s Penguin Welcome sign I figured this was perfect. A year ago, my son and daughter-in-law started a fitness center called “Rockhopper Strong Fitness”, their logo is the Rockhopper Penguin… So, I figured I’d take Todd’s sign, model the head of a Rockhopper Penguin and I’d be done…. Found a cute charature of a Rockhopper that I could model and modeled it in Aspire. After modeling the head, I added it to Todd’s sign. I’m done! Before I could cut the sign, we left on a trip before Christmas. On our first night on the on the road we were staying at a hotel that had an LED dry erase board next to the check-in desk. This got me to thinking (the snowball starts to roll). Instead of a static Welcome sign why not a sign she could use to Welcome people and write messages about special trainings, etc.… So, I got on line and ordered an LED dry erase board that would be at home when we returned for our trip. I got to thinking about how I was going to attach the flippers and head to the sign. I decided a frame would do the trick. Not wanting just, a boring square frame I decided a “rock” frame would be much better. So now I’m modeling a rock frame (snow ball is getting bigger and gaining momentum).
When we got hope the LED dry erase board was waiting, now I could get the measurements I needed to finish modeling the rock frame. After modeling the frame, adding the flippers and Rockhopper head, I discovered several problems. The frame was too long for my CNC, no problem I’ll just tile the Y axis. It’s also too wide for my CNC. I don’t want to just tile the X axis as that would put a hard-cut edge to the two halves and I figured that would be hard to hide when I put the two halves together (that snowball is now out of control). I decided to make two separate jobs so I could control how and where the cuts would be between the two halves. But wait there’s more…. The sign is too tall for the Z axis on my CNC (snow ball is getting huge). I figured out if I sliced the Rockhopper head that would take care of the Z axis issue (job # 3).
I wanted to keep the sign as light as possible, so I decided to use 2” pink foam board from the box store and back it with 5mm lauan plywood to give it a bit more rigidity. I’ve used this technique before, and it works well. Outside of an error in Y axis alignment that I made on the backside the two halves cut just fine and so did the top slice of the face.
After gluing the halves and face together it was time to sand, fill and paint.
The Snowball took a lot longer to finish that I was planning to spend on this project, but I can’t complain about the end results. Hope she likes it…