On Saturday, Jan. 19th we held our first Camp of the new year at Ed Conley’s shop ( AHA Woodworks) in Marietta, GA. It was our fourth Camp at Ed’s place, and in spite of some very unseasonable weather (snow, ice, temperatures in the teens…) we had our largest group to date !
People started to wander by the shop Friday afternoon for an informal demo of Ed’s two machines ( a PRT, and an Alpha), and even though there were numerous warning of poor driving conditions in the area ( schools closed, etc) we had “Campers” from Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Kansas, and obviously Georgia.
As usual we had some pretty interesting “Show and Tell” items on display, (such as Dan Dunn’s clock made of Corian pictured above).
Paul Nielsen brought in some new coating products, and examples of how they looked when applied. One was a “gilder’s wax”, and another was a liquid inlay product called “Inlace”.
Andy Brooks showed us some pieces he’s been working on, including an RC controlled model plane made of a foam like substance from Europe.
Dan Dunn showed off his beautiful clock as well as some more of his great lithophanes.
Robert Ball brought in some bat house kits, a completed bat house, and a 3D sculpted bat that he and his wife are now producing for school kids.
Gary Beckwith gave a demo of the newest version of Artcam Pro software ( Artcam 2008) and showed the group how to turn 2D bitmaps into 3D objects.
Ed Conley cut some bodies of a musical instrument he is working with.
And as a group we covered some of the topics which are pretty much “universal” such as;
a survey of the newest software packages now available
sign making and materials
vacuum tables, and vacuum pumps
carving 3D files
pricing the products we produce
digitizing and scanning objects, and converting the scans into cutting files
There are pictures of the projects mentioned above on the Shopbot “Flickr” page which can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/campshopbot
It was a good Camp, and a great start to the New Year…..
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