This sketch is for a carved, western red cedar sign. The cheeseboard will be carved in three dimensions (a combination of ShopBot carving and hand finishing) and then will be realistically painted. This Sign Story will be a bit unique, as much of it will be told using video.

The picture above is the “before” of this project. I have no idea how old this sign is, but I think “really old” covers it pretty well.

An opportunity like this is what we really enjoy here at Lincoln Sign Company. There is nothing better than giving a well-established business the ability to update their look and put their best foot forward. What many business owners fail to realize, is that many potential customers size a business up based on their sign, first and foremost. Why not give them the best possible first impression? I would like to thank Harman’s Cheese in advance for letting us give them a hand with this project.

Here is the “glue-up” of the sign blank. We take Western Red Cedar, 2″ x 6″ boards, and glue them together to make a large, continuous piece of wood for our sign. The “glue” that we use is West System Epoxy, the same glue that boat-makers use. When I was helping Lee with this glue-up, I managed to get the epoxy all over my blue-jeans. Fantastic! There is nothing that ruins clothing faster than West Systems!

Here is what things look like once a sign design goes into our 3-dimensional carving software, ArtCam Pro. It allows us to tell our ShopBot what we want to carve, and how we want to carve it, and it lets us see a “simulation of what the carving will look like.

The red lines in the above screen shot show where the various carving tools will actually be cutting into the surface of the material. The blue lines show where the tool is raised so it can safely move to carve the next letter without accidentally cutting into the sign surface.

Here is the sign after the lettering has been carved, and we are getting ready to prime and paint it. We have masked off the area on the sign where we will laminate the carving onto the cedar. This is so we get a good, strong bond between the carving and the natural wood of the sign. This is a much stronger bond than glue on top of paint would be. We try to do this wherever possible.

Here is the vector art that we exported into ArtCam Pro, and this project is a really good example of what I talked about in last month’s article. There is a huge amount of detail in the carving, and a great many complex angles. I certainly could build a 3D model in my ArtCam Pro and have the ShopBot carve this on its own, but by the time I do all of the 3D model work, I probably could knock out two of them by hand. So I took a middle-of-the-road approach to doing this carving, and “roughed out” the shapes and depths using the ShopBot, and then finished it by hand. This probably saved me 4-8 hours on this project.

This is the cheese knife rendered in ArtCam Pro as a 3D model. This was the one element of the carving that I let the ShopBot carve all by itself.

Here is what my finished “rough-out” carving will look like. Mainly I was going for depth and definition of all of the objects, so then I would be able to jump right in with a chisel and finish them off.

The following is a series of videos that we shot while we were working on this project. (We occasionally use video on my blog, www.signsneversleep.com.) The video was shot and edited by a talented teenager named Cam. We found that attempting to do video on the blog as a regular feature was much too labor intensive (after all, we are supposed to be concentrating on making signs!) but this series of videos does give you a unique look inside of our shop.

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Here is the completed carving fully painted and ready to mount to the completed sign.

This was a terrific project, and we were thrilled to be able to contribute to the makeover of a Sugar Hill, NH landmark.

What I would like to do for this article, is to concentrate specifically on the design software that we use to program the ShopBot; ArtCAM Pro. While I don’t want to specifically do a “step-by-step” through all the minutia of the software process, I do want to show someone that might not be familiar with ArtCAM (or toolpath design software in general), what setting up tool-paths looks like in the program and get an idea of how ArtCAM and the ShopBot work together to help us create signs.

There were a great number of software choices when it came time for us to decide what software we were going to use with our ShopBot (many of which are profiled on the ShopBot website here). I was fortunate in that I was already very familiar with ArtCAM Pro, so it was a simple choice for me, but there is a wide selection of software you could choose to work with, and it is important that each ShopBot owner make a selection based on software features and price.

There are three types of carving that can be done with a 3-axis CNC Router.

* 2D Cutting: Traditionally, 2D carving is achieved using basic, end-mill bits, and all that is required of the ShopBot is plunging the bit to a specific depth into the material, and then following a vector to create a shape. This creates a cut-out shape in the substrate. In some cases, a hole, or pocket, might be cut out of a substrate as well.

* 2.5D Carving: 2.5D Carving, is when a specialty bit (like a V-shaped bit) is used to create angles or curves in a material by virtue of the shape of the bit itself. The most common example of this would be v-carved lettering, and this is a capability we use at Lincoln Sign Company every day.

* 3D Carving: True 3D carving, is the “high-end” of what can be done with a ShopBot, and is what we love the most about the machine. 3D carving begins as a 3-dimensional model which one creates with software, that is then translated into a series of toolpaths that are cut with a ballnose, 3D bit. In this type of carving, an endless variety of shapes and angles can be cut out with the exact same bit, as the shapes are not coming from the physical shape of the bit, but rather, the 3D moves that the router makes to “trace” out the shape. (For a more involved explanation of 2D, 2.5D and 3D, click here)

The project that I am going to talk about today, is going to be a traditional, New England carved sign which utilizes 2.5D carving and 2D cutting. We used ArtCAM Pro for this project (but we could have also completed the project using ArtCAM Insignia or ArtCAM Express)

This is a custom carved sign for a historic home in New England. It is a wooden sign, constructed of Western Red Cedar, and will be hand gold-leafed with 23k gold. The sketch above is what we would normally submit to a customer for approval.

Here is what the ArtCAM interface looks like when the design is viewed as a line drawing. If you look on the left hand side of the screen, you can see the various carving icon controls for 2D and 3D cutting. If you look at the second icon under “2D”, you will see the control for “area clear”. This is traditionally used to create a pocket in material or for creating the illusion of raised, flat-lettering (by cutting away the background to a certain depth).

Here, I am going to use the Area Clear Control to “mill” the surface of the material before I 2.5D carve it.

So why do I need to “mill” the surface of the material?

One thing you learn pretty quickly when you start working with any CNC router, is that NO material is a consistent depth. Even 2″ thick High Density Urethane is not a consistent thickness throughout the entire sheet. This inconsistency causes V-Carve lettering to vary in depth, which looks terrible. The strokes and serifs will appear to vary in width, in some places too wide, and in others, not wide enough.

The solution to this problem is to have a flat-bottomed bit (an “end-mill” bit), travel over the entire surface of the project to make sure the material is cut to a consistent height. If you look to the left of the screen, I have opened the Area Clear dialog box, and have selected a 1/2″ wide bit. I set the speed which bit travels over the material, and how much of an overlap I want the bit to have as it makes each pass (you can’t see it in this view, but I have set the overlap to 0.25″). The red lines over the design show the path that the bit will take when I am ready to run all of the toolpaths.

In the screen-capture above, I am selecting a 100 degree V-bit, which I am going to use to carve the lettering and the border.

The red lines show the actual path that the 100 degree bit will follow as it cuts.

One of the great things about ArtCAM Pro, is how it will show you a simulation, in 3D, of how the actual carving will look. Here is a view of this simulation, and again you can see the red lines that represents where the tip of the v-bit will make contact with the material. In this angled view, you can get an idea of how much vertical movement the router bit does to achieve a carved 2.5D letter.

Here is another view of that same simulation. Believe me, it is great to see the simulation, and be confident you made all the right carving choices, before you start cutting into an expensive sheet of material.

In this screen capture, I am choosing a 1/4″ end-mill bit, and I have selected the outside vector of the sign to cut the sign away from the sheet of material.

When cutting a shape out of 1.5″ thick Western Red Cedar, you need to make multiple passes, cutting deeper on each of the passes (unless you like to collect broken bits and ruined signs). Here I believe I am having the router only cut .25″ of material at a time.

Another nice thing about this view, is that you can confirm that you are not cutting deeper than your material is thick, which would mean accidentally cutting into the router table surface itself.

Here is what the finished simulation looks like.

Here is the sign as it appears after we are finished carving it. (I’ll stack the firewood later, I swear)

The sign is primed (seen here) and then painted with a background color. We use a top-quality outdoor latex paint, and put anywhere from 3-5 coats on the sign before we start lettering it.

We actually need to letter the sign (that is, hand-paint the letters) before we gold-leaf it to make sure we have a smooth, friendly surface to paint the gold-size onto.

Gold-Size is what allows us to gold-leaf the letters of a sign. Size is a varnish that dries very slowly (over a 24 hour period) and allows us to place gold on the letters and adhere it without ruining the shine of the gold. We need to start leafing at just the right moment as well, when the Size is just about dry, but not quite. It is a pretty short window of opportunity.

It is a time and labor intensive technique, but it yields fantastic results!

I hope this has been able to give you a taste of what it is like to work on a project within ArtCAM Pro. If you are interested in learning more, you can always go to ArtCam.com.

One of the interesting things about making signs is that more often than not, we are making a custom item, specifically to a single customer’s specifications, and that sign (once created) will never be made again. If you are building furniture or wooden toys for a retail environment, it is very likely that with many of your projects, once you have made one, all of the planning and programming for the first one carries over to the next one you make and so on. So, with the 2nd item, you are standing on the shoulders of the 1st, and that work is already done even if you are doing 20 or 200 items.

Don’t misunderstand, I realize that in any industry there are going to be many projects that are “custom” and one-offs, but I think in the sign industry (more than any other) we work to produce pieces of commercial art that are totally unique and will never be reproduced (unless the customer needs multiple signs). (Believe me, if there were a way to convince a furniture store that they should just buy a copy of the sign that I just completed for Pat’s Pizza, it would be terrific, but I’m not that good a salesman).

When sign-shops are considering buying a router, one of the things that they wrestle with is if whether it is faster to hand-carve a one-off sign, rather than take the time to set up the file in the design software, prep the material and place it on the router, and then do the finish work needed to get the carving ready for paint. The largest chunk of this time is certainly getting the design file ready, and when you are getting a file for 3D carving prepared, it can involve quite a bit of time.

The first thing to remember is that a ShopBot is fast, and it is certainly going to carve much faster than you can when it comes to V-carve lettering. But when it comes to 3D carving, the hand-carver begins to catch up with the ShopBot. Using the sign I am talking about in this article (Sandpiper Cottage), you can see that I needed to create a 3D carving of a sandpiper. For me to model this in ArtCAM Pro (my CNC design software of choice), I would probably need a good 1 to 2 hours to render even a simple relief in 3D, and I can certainly carve the bird faster by hand. So, does this mean I shouldn’t use the ShopBot for this sign? (and, the bigger question of, “should I never have bought the ShopBot at all?”).

It is important to remember, that it is not “all or nothing” when it comes to the hand vs. machine debate, and this sandpiper sign is a great example. I can use the router to carve everything including the shape of the bird, and then do the last bit of shaping by hand. Believe me, there are parts of quite a few sign projects that I did when first purchased the ShopBot, that I could have saved a lot of time on if I had used this “roughing-out” strategy, rather than doing all of the complex 3D carving with the ShopBot.

Here is a summary of the project and how we used our “roughing-out” strategy:

Sometimes, when we do a custom carved sign, we are given nothing at all to start with, and we create a design for a home or business totally from scratch. In the case of the Sandpiper Cottage sign, we were given a pretty good starting point from the customer. The first design that is shown above is what the owners had been using for a logo for the past couple of years, as the home is a vacation rental home.

My first order of business was to go in and tweak the logo to maximize all the good things about their current design. Loved the sandpiper (but we needed to realistically carve and paint the bird), and the reeds were great and were going to make the sign. I was a bit worried about the font they used, but I rearranged it and made it a bit bolder, and am very happy with the results…

Here is the router carving the sign in High-Density Urethane. Remember that my plan with this project is to 3D carve everything but the sandpiper, and then go in and finish it by hand.

The picture above is the sign on the router getting carved. Carving a 3-dimensional sign like this is not a quick process. In this case, I am using an eighth inch ball-nose bit, and I believe this sign, which is just 1.5 square feet of material took about twelve hours. Now, we liked this sign so much, that we are actually doing one for ourselves to keep for a sample, so the ShopBot actually 3D carved for 24 hours on this project.

Now, I can hear someone in the audience raising their hand and pointing out “considering the fact that the router is running for 24 hours, could you have done both of those by hand?”. The simple answer is “yes”, we could have hand-carved both of those signs in 24 hours. BUT, no-one was carving these sign in that 24 hour period but the ShopBot. The rest of my staff was working on other projects, and I was doing other things like working on the next design, getting an invoice ready to send out, or yes, even sleeping. Don’t underestimate how terrific it is for the ShopBot to be working on a project, while you work on another or do nothing at all.

Here is the sign after the 3D “rough-out” carving has been completed. This house sign is only 12″ high, so that is a lot of really fine detail work the ShopBot did when it comes to those cattails and reeds. I’m not sure they would have looked quite as crisp if we had attempted them by hand.

Here is the sign with all of the carving that we planned to do with the ShopBot. The total programming time for this project was under 3 hours. It probably would have been 5-6 hours if we hand tried to do everything in ArtCAM.

So up next, is a series of photographs that I took while carving the sandpiper for the sign. I think it took about 30 minutes to do. The general shape of the bird is created in the carving, and the details of the sandpiper will be created with paint.

(For all the fine-art woodcarvers out there, keep in mind, I am not attempting to create a piece of art that will be viewed up close. You won’t see the veining of each individual feather in this sandpiper. Here, the details and effect were going to be done with paint. Signs are meant to be viewed at a distance, and any excessive detail that I put into the sandpiper, would be lost from long-distance viewing.)

Here is the completed sandpiper after it has been detail painted,

and the picture below shows the project totally completed.

We have started using this “roughing-out” technique on many projects, and it is proving very effective. This is another use of the router that I really didn’t see coming when we starting working with it, but it is helping us to better manage time within projects. One of the terrific things about owning the ShopBot is the new capabilities and production strategies that it enables you to do, that you weren’t expecting. As with any tool, the more you work with it, the better you understand it, and the better you are able to incorporate it into your workflow.

The material we carved the sign from is called Precision Board or high density urethane. It is hard to explain what it actually is or what it feels like, and the best way to explain it would probably be to describe it as a super-dense insulating material. It is a great material to carve with, as it is extremely uniform and will never “surprise” you the way wood will sometimes when you are carving. It is a material that was specially made for the sign industry, and has been in use for over twenty years. This sign is actually carved out of one piece of material. After it is carved we use a primer call Sign Prime (imagine that!) that is specially made for this material that primarily helps the paint bond to it. This sign was already painted with Sign Prime, and tomorrow we will start hitting it with some green…

The Sign Prime that we use is a water-based primer (we only use oil based primers when we are working with wood) and we are going to follow up the water based primer with a water based paint. The paint that we put on the majority of our signs is a Latex Outdoor Acrylic Paint, and it is the best quality paint that we can possibly buy. I would say the majority of signs are painted with Oil-Based enamel paints, but Lincoln Sign Company has been using latex paints over 20 years with fantastic results. There are signs that have been out in the field for 5-7 years that we have done that still look as if they had just been painted. The color we are using here is what we call in-house “Dark Green” but is more specifically known in the shop as “Crylite-2-Pumps- Black”. It is the color all of us see when we close our eyes. Yes, we do many, many, MANY green signs here at Lincoln Sign Company, but we do live up in the woods (Brown is a big color as well). If we were located in California I am sure our standard color would be Fuchsia or perhaps Teal.

Here is the sign right after Michelle put the first coat of paint on the border. For the border of the sign we use 1-Shot or (One-Shot) Paints. These are the paints that every sign-maker has in their paint cabinet, and they are what we use whenever we hand-letter a sign. The differ from the latex mainly because the have a smooth, glossy finish that levels out very well while drying, and they tend to be thicker so are easier to letter with. I think 1-Shot is the right call the paint the border of this sign, as it will give it a little bit of extra “zip” because it is a high-gloss paint. We will need to hit the border with 2 coats (as we do just about everything with at least two coats). The background green on the sign actually ended up getting about 4 or 5 until we were happy with it.

There is quite a bit going on in this picture. The trees have been painted a few different colors of green, and the “sky” background has been painted a purplish-blue. You might notice that the letters seem glossy? That is because Vicki has just painted “Gold Size” onto the letters. Gold size is a “glue” (not really, but we’ll call it that) that will allow real 23K gold to “stick” to the carved letters. Oh, you might notice that there seems to be sand or powder all over the sign. This is so the gold will not stick to the background paint when we leaf it. I am guessing Vicki used baby powder for this sign, as she usually uses that, or a potato (the starch of the potato also can act as a “barrier” to keep gold from sticking)

Here is the Korber Sign, completed and hung in our “picture studio” for one last snapshot before it is picked up by its new owner. I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, and we were talking about websites and weblogs, and he asked me why I do the Lincoln Sign Company weblog the way I do (meaning “why do you put such an ungodly amount of time into it every day?”) There are actually, many, many, many answers to this question, but the answer I gave him relates to this sign that we just completed. It is always a pleasure to make a sign for someone, and especially for something as personal as someone’s home. I want to “remember the process” of making this sign, and I want the ability to look back at this sign, years from now, and see the little details about the process that I may have forgotten. I also want that ability for any of the people who have, do, or will work with us at some point, to be able to take someone you care about to this little spot on the Internet and say “you see these trees? I painted those trees”. That might sound like a small thing to some people, but it is my small thing… Now, if you want to see the entire process of making this sign, and other projects like it, you can go to where we tell the stories of how we make our signs…

We were contacted by Chip Roper of Roper Real Estate of Waterville Valley, NH back in June about making a sign for his new location, and we installed that sign Thursday, August 24th, right on schedule.

The above picture shows the board that we are using for the project after it has been cut to size and it has been trimmed on the table saw. How does one make a sign blank? Glad you asked. Basically we take a number of boards, and glue them end-to-end to make a large piece of wood that will become our sign.

When we sandblast, our wood if choice is vertical-grain, Western Red Cedar. We actually have it shipped in from Washington State, as I have not been able to find any nice Western Red Cedar (that I have been happy with) at this end of the country. Why Western Red Cedar? Resistant to insects, rot, and repels water to some degree. It is also a very light wood (doesn’t weigh all that much) and it likes being carved (as opposed to oak, which does not!).

After the wood has been cut and trimmed, we use a tool call a “biscuit cutter” to cut slots in the boards. When we glue the boards together, we will stick a wooden wedge called a “biscuit” into the slot which will help us get the boards lined up properly.

After spreading glue on the edges of the boards, we put the blank together and then pull it together using pipe-clamps. Here is Chip’s blank after all the clamps have been placed, and it will sit overnight and be ready to blast in the morning.

Now, here is where we used the ShopBot, and we used it for two things:

#1: We actually use our ShopBot as a vertical planer. After we take the clamps off a glue up, we lay it on the table, put a 0.5” bit into it, and then it pass over every square inch of the sign to plane off everything nice and flat. Then we flip it over and do it again! What we end up with is a picture perfect blank surface

#2: Naturally, we also use the ShopBot to cut out the shape of the sign-blank. It’s really a no-brainer to do that, and I can’t imagine picking up a jig-saw to do it.

As a matter of fact, I can’t tell you the last time we used the jig-saw in the shop.

Here are the glued up boards, after they have been sanded, planed, and cut to size and shape.

Here is the sign after the “sandblast mask” has been applied.

What’s sandblast mask? Well, the way you make a sandblasted sign, is you take an air-compressor (a BIG one), hook it up to a special metal chamber called a “hopper” that is filled with a fine, abrasive material (we use coal-slag). The hopper fills with pressurized air, and then you open the other end which is connected to a hose and a ceramic nozzle (like a fire-hose, kinda)

That allows you to direct the coal-slag firing out the end of the hose. Now, when you shoot this at wood, it wears the wood away. The letters, border and mountain on this sign have been covered with sandblast stencil (which is made out of rubber). The rubber bounces the coal-slag away, preserving the wood underneath. That is how you get the “raised lettering look, of a sandblasted sign”.

Here is the sign in the sandblast shed ready for a good blastin’!

Here is the Roper sign after it has been sandblasted

When we pull the sandblast mask off, you can see that the letters and graphics have been untouched by the coal slag, and appear as if they have been “raised” above a rough-textured background.

Pretty slick…

Here is the sign as the background color is being painted. (Our most popular color – Crylite 2-Pumps Black – we all BLEED this color)

Here the border and the lettering been painted.

Here you can see what is so unique about a sandblasted sign. Sandblasted signs are very labor-intensive, but they are always worth the effort! They can take a very straight-forward, clean logo, help it gain prestige and attention.

We really don’t consider our job done until a sign is properly installed, and in some cases the install can be the most difficult part of making a sign. Every installation has it own set of challenges, and this installation was more challenging than most.

Initially, when we went out to install this sign, we found that if we had not called Dig Safe (which is an organization that finds power, cable, and telephone lines in locations where you plan to dig – for free) I would be writing this “FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE.”

Yes, the original location would have been going through what was probably the electrical trunk line for all of Waterville Valley, and needless to say it would have stung…. a bit.

So, we needed to go back to the shop, fabricate some different posts, and move the install up the hill. When we were driving out to the location, I joked with Lee that we were digging in the middle of a huge rhododendron bush (which we were), and I could guarantee that we wouldn’t encounter any rocks, but we would find lots of roots. (When digging post holes, roots tend to be annoying but can be easily cut-away during the digging process, but rocks just plain slow you down and are very resistant to the whole “cutting” thing.)

Well, when we actually got to the site, we didn’t find one root, but we found some really amazingly big, heavy, and annoyingly placed rocks. We did, however, eventually get them all out, and everyone was all smiles after that.

This carved sign was a “thank you gift” from one family to another and I really wanted to create a sign that captured a “snowy” and “carefree” kind of feel.

The image to the left is the proof that I sent to the customer.

This is what the 3D model looks like in my modeling software ArtCAM Pro.

OK, so this is what the sign actually looks like once we get into the process of carving it. We use our ShopBot to do all of our carving, and each tool-path used to carve a feature of a sign is fed into the software item by item, and then is sent to the router, item-by-item.

Now just because “a machine does it”, does not mean that we sit back all day playing video games. Creating a 3D model like the one for the skis takes about 2 hours (and that’s not including the lettering toolpaths).

Here is what the sign looks like after the lettering and in-line are carved. We used a 90 degree V-Carving bit for this. Then it has been cut out creating the external shape. Now I need to do a bit of sanding, and it will be off to the paint-shop for this little guy.

Here is the ski sign after it has been primed and painted.

The Sign Prime that we use is a water-based primer (we only use oil based primers when we are working with wood) and we are going to follow up the water based primer with a water based paint.

The paint that we put on the majority of our signs is a Latex Outdoor Acrylic Latex Paint, and is the best quality paint that we can possibly buy. I would say the majority of signs (created in other sign shops) are painted with Oil-Based enamel paints, but Lincoln Sign Company has been using latex paints over 20 years with fantastic results. There are signs that have been out in the field for 5-7 years that we have done that still look as if they had just been painted. One of the things that we pride ourselves on as a company is creating signs that last a long, long time.

In this picture our ski sign has been “lettered”.

If you think that hand-painting carved letters and consistently staying within the lines takes a certain amount of skill,…. it does. I’m not the one who does it, it is usually Vicki or Michelle at this point, and we have plans to get some other people trained to do it as well… I have done it in a pinch…

For the lettering of our carved signs we use 1-Shot or (One-Shot) Paints. These are the paints that every sign-maker has in their paint cabinet, and they are what we use whenever we hand-letter a sign. The differ from the latex mainly because they have a smooth, glossy finish that levels out very well while drying, and they tend to be thicker so are easier to letter with.

We will need to hit the letters with 2 coats (as we do just about everything with at least two coats). The background blue on the sign actually ended up getting about 3 or 4 until we were happy with it.

Here is the ski sign completed and out of the shop. Vicki painted the snow with a combination of blue and white, and was able to get a significant amount of detail in on the skis.

We really enjoy doing custom residential signs like this as it is wonderful to think that something we made will become an integral part of a legacy of someone’s home. This sign could be the first thing a person sees after getting home from work each day, the signal to someone that has a vacation home that they have arrived at their vacation destination, or just a wonderful little reminder to a ski enthusiast that even though it is August 15th and 98 degrees, one day soon there will be snow again.

Those are the reasons that we make signs like these…

I am a big believer in carved signs, not only because they hold up well over time, always look distinguished (not to mention the fact that it is the primary type of sign we make here at Lincoln Sign Company). Carved signs send a “message” to a businesses customer or prospective buyer. A carved sign shows that the business is “solid”, that the business takes its image very seriously, and that the business will stand the test of time. I am always very pleased when a customer chooses any type of carved sign.

I initially spent some time prototyping these signs since there were going to be 67 of them. I spent about 3 and a half hours doing this “prototype” from start to finish.

Most of that time was spent in the 3D modeling software that we use (ArtCAM Pro) and planning how our ShopBot was going to cut everything efficiently and cleanly. Also, I spent some time watching the router cut and tweaking the speeds that it will be cutting at to get the best balance between speed and clean finish cuts.

After the prototype you see in the photo above was done cutting, I was 88% happy with the result, and went back to the software to make the changes to get everything up to 100%. I was also glad that I consulted Lee in my shop on what he thought about the end result, as he suggested a tweak that is going to make painting the borders on these much, much easier.

Now, normally we do not create a physical prototype for every sign we do, because:

#1: The 3D carving software that we use actually allows us to create a “virtual prototype” on-screen so we can see what a sign will look like after it has been carved

#2: That would get expensive (just the material for this prototype cost about $15.00 ), not to mention the time and effort involved.

The only time we are really justified in doing a prototype is when we are doing something radical we have never done before and we need to see if everything will “work out” like we think it will, or, we are going to be doing a lot of them and want to make sure that we have gotten everything correct.

This is the control screen for ArtCAM Pro, which is the program that we use to control our ShopBot. It allows us to take simple line art, and tell our router to carve the line art with certain cutting tools to create shapes and angles.

This picture shows the path that the cutting tool, in this case a 120 degree V-bit, will take as it cuts into the material to create that “20″. As you see, it is even showing us a “simulation” on the screen of what the finished product will look like, which is extremely helpful as you can imagine.

This view shows what will be the final tool-path that we will run, and this will be the one that cuts the sign out of the material.

Our ShopBot is a terrific tool, and I really don’t know how we could live without it, but the ShopBot is really only one small part of the equation that allows us to have fun every day creating memorable signs. The software we use, Gerber’s OMEGA design software and ArtCAM Pro, play an important part, as well as all of the quality materials that we use to build our signs. But most importantly, it is the people here at Lincoln Sign Company that makes our mission possible. I am lucky enough to be surrounded by genuine craftspeople who care a great deal about what they do, and through caring, have become extremely talented.

We were able to cut 24 signs at a time using the router, and that is using 5 different sized and shaped cutting tools to get all of the angles and effects that we want. How long does it take? The total-elapsed cutting time is just about 4 hours, but figuring in tool changes etc the material is on the table for about 10 hours (some of the time it is just sitting there waiting for a tool-change as I am not going to run out immediately after it is done with the next cutting tool, it can just wait, thank you very much!)

Now, don’t think all this technology makes our kind of sign-making effortless. Remember, I probably worked on the cutting files for about 12 hours to perfect them and get them set up for all the different lot signs. Still, it was nice to know that while I was out skiing at Loon Mountain my router was working on these…

Here is the first of these signs to make it through the entire production process.

Originally we were going to go with one color of brown for both the letters and the border, but after getting into the actual painting process we opted to go with a dark brown for the border and a lighter, russet brown for the carved numbers. Worked much nicer with the overall coloration of the entire sign…

Once the production process started running full-bore, it was pretty much impossible to walk through the paint-shop without running into one of these signs. All the numbers and the border were hand-lettered, and the South Peak Resort logo was printing using our Gerber EDGE.

These signs would have been impossible to do cost-effectively without out ShopBot, and that is probably one of the things I like most about having one here in the shop. We can pretty much offer a customer anything that they want, or that we can dream up, and then we just need to take a moment to figure out how to make the ShopBot do it.

Throughout the process of creating these signs, I kept track of our progress on our company’s weblog. If you want to learn more about how we make signs at Lincoln Sign Company, feel free to visit [www.signsneversleep.com].