Yooooooooooo guys! What's up?
We had a busy period with boring commercial work that screwed up our chi, but we're getting back on track!
I got a new toy in the meantime, the one I wanted for a long time - a CNC machine!!!!
It's called the OX and it's made by a great UK company named
Ooznest. This particular model is 100x150 cm big, and it's around 1500£ which is pretty cheap for this kind of machine. I sent them an email about our project, and we even got a discount - which just goes to prove how cool they are.
Ok, so after a long but enjoyable assembly I was faced with the problem: how the hell does one use this thing? And it was by far one of the hardest things I had to learn in a long time. First you have to prepare the graphic you want to cut in vectors. For that I used Adobe Illustrator but I had to learn it first as I never used it before. I'm a RASTER kind of guy! :lol Then, you import the vectors into another program where you tell it to use that vectors as a cutting path, and you set up the depths of the cut, speed, and so on.. Of course finding a decent program and learning it was a pain in the a**. (I chose Vectric Aspire in the end and it's pretty intuitive and works good).
And then you import that new file into yet
another program that communicates with the machine itself, and you're ready for cutting.
But that's only the digital part of the process.
Then there's the physical part: learning how each material behaves when you cut it. What speeds to use? Why is the plastic melting when I cut it? Will the bit break if I go faster? And so on and so on...... Now after a month or two of playing with it, it all works just fine. But man, it was a nightmare when you're at the beginning and you don't even know where to start...
So anyway - I will use the CNC to make new and final set of buildings for the miniature city! I call them "buildings 3.0". And the way the machine really helps is by cutting tons of these little windows that the light will shine through.
You can also see a layer of shallow lines. That's just some kind of panneling to give more texture to the building. And for that I invented this wonderful contraption:
It's a ball point pen and it just pushes in these lines in the soft plastic. The ink doesn't bother me as it will all be painted anyway.
The CNC cuts out all the parts of the building too, and all that's left is to assemble it.
I detailed it with 3D printed parts, and some good old random junk.
Primed, of course:
And after some weathering, here's the beauty shots:
I really like the quality of this one.. It looks more professional then the old ones, and these windows give it a real sense of scale. It would be impossible to cut them out by hand.
It does take some time to prepare the graphics and cut list, but the advantage is that once I do it - I can cut out as many copies as I want quickly. So for the price of one I can get three buildings for example! :lol And if I change the scale and rotate them differently in the shot no one will know they are the same.
Ok guys, I hope you like it.
New updates very soon!
Chiao!