Our local community college has a “Hall of Fame Night” that includes a ceremony along with a live and silent auction for the schools foundation. Since I am past graduate, player, and having a teammate that will be inducted in this year’s ceremony, I thought it would be nice to have my students help make a country style sign with the schools logo for this event that they can auction off.
The first thing I had them do is draw the logo of the school on AutoCAD. We then put that file into Partworks and then added more geometry to the project to make the sign look more like a barn. We then developed the tool paths for the sign.
Note: There are ways you can transfer JPEG images into software as vector objects but it was nice to be able to have the students develop the geometry for this using their CAD skills.
After the sign was machined we used paint pens to color in the engraved areas and then finished the project. We used a pickle stain on the maple to give it a whitewash/antique appearance. We also use rough cut walnut for the roof that helped give it an antique look. I have found over the years that maple works best for this since woods like oak cause the paint to bleed in its grain.
Another option you can do is to have students design a logo for a coaster that had their names and/or initials in it using CAD and then allowing them to machine it out. Some of these have turned out great and they are much smaller than this sign.
AUTOCAD Drawing of schools logo
Someone will want this for their MANCAVE!
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