Day 2 of the full sized tiling job. This was the stressful day to pull the trigger. First day was a little be nervy, just starting the largest project I’ve done and knowing it was the first of several opportunities to ruin a perfectly good almost full sized piece of HDU. But today!
But I did eventually hit the final “Start” button. Here is where I am. Not 100% perfect, but nothing that “The Finishing Lady” can’t fix.
The G is always a good place to start (Gary, Gariff, whatever). If you look carefully you can see the overlap of the two tiles. If I have to point it out…it’s close enough! I ran my 30 degree Vee Bit first to make sure it was as close to dead on as possible.
Final thoughts. I’m feeling VERY good about this one. Tile 3 should be a little less nervy (maybe(?)).
If your curious, I’ve finally fully dialed in my feeds and speeds for HDU to what I’m pretty sure is the exact max capacity of the Pro 5: 100 in/min plunge, 200 in/min feed rate. I’m running the 65mm VFD Spindle at 18,000 rpm. Everything is working spot on. I never have a hot bit and I have checked often.
Here you go. You’ll have to weed through all the extras, but the textures are done with 1/4" and 1/2" ball mills. Also…adjust the feeds and speeds to whatever you are working with. This one is pretty fast on the feed and slow on the plunge.
@SirGariff The texture really makes the letters stand out and adds an awesome background. From the way things are going Tile 3 should be a breeze. Great job!
Looks like it’s dialed in! Would be curious to know what the total mill time was for this project. I now what little texturing I’ve done was lengthy, especially with a 0.125” bit. But, the look was fantastic.
A very quick update. On the home stretch on this project. Woohooo! (Well, then “The Finishing Lady” takes over. She might take exception to the “home stretch” comment. We figured out that when it’s on its side, it’s as tall as her! .
Tile 3 is placed exactly right. You can see… actually you CAN’T see, the 1" overlap in the two tiles! It is right there.
It’s just a cool looking sign. The combination of the textures, the Arnold Palmer signature, everything. Just so very happy with the way it’s turning out!!
It is complete! First tiling project done as close to perfection as needed. A few minor tweaks next time but all in all it’s a massive success. Thanks for all the help, compadres!
I have to give the Solution to @GJM on this one because the tiling hole was the real key to the whole project and I will most definitely be using that every time.
A secondary Solution goes to @SLCJedi for his great fence. So great and will be used often!
And a third Solution goes to @Jeffish for the great step blocks. I’ll be using those on I think every project from now on!
Thanks, community, for all the help in getting me to this success.
Carve time: ~21 hours at 200 in/min feed and 100 in/min plunge rates
Learning and design time: ~80 hours. But worth every minute. Way longer, or giving up, without this community!!
Arnold Palmer designed the golf course that this is going to. Came in with a helicopter to work at it and had a “cottage” there.
Now, it’s “The Finishing Lady’s” turn. She figures a week with the bondo work, sanding, priming, three coats of black, and three coats of gold.
Still working on convincing my potential customer to give me a try for a large HDU sign. I can’t do the sandblast style finish they are used to so I sent some renderings of other options. I will send them a shot of yours.
I think I may have to do like you did and make some physical samples. At least I can do that with thinner material.
Bondoing two tiling holes in the top border and repairing some serifs in one the the “E"s that got hit with the 1/4” Ball mill on the tiling overlap. But that’s it.
I’ve been comparing sandblasted hdu with CNC carved. The carved just looks cleaner!
@SirGariff Wow did that ever turn out great! Worth every minute of design work for sure. The smoothness of the cuts is amazing. The words look like you placed them on top of the texture… how did you get the texture so close and into the small areas of the text?
Be nice to see the stages of the paint job. Be good to see how she paints the lettering without getting any on the background.
Thanks! What I wanted to do was just 1/2" ball mill but I couldn’t get as close as I wanted to the letters so that’s why the 2 texture toolpaths (the second being the 1/4" ball mill). I did offsets for each texture toolpath as @WillAdams taught me a while ago, set 1/2 the width of each ball mill. Exactly perfect? No, but close enough for a sign this large. And when the background is painted black, you won’t see the non- textured areas anyway.
I spoke to Cathy about keeping a pictorial journal of the process she as she progresses. I’ll get those pics in the near future. To be clear. She spends time touching up the background with a fine artist’s brush after painting the letters with. I think she is more of a perfectionist than I am!
Day 1 - Bondo and sanding.
Serifs on of the E’s and tiling holes bondoed and sanded. She also did some touch up with an Dremel along the bottom of the sign to get rid of an untextured area.
It was the first job and it was able to ensure the measurements were accurate… and being the first tiling job…to be able to move the spindle off of xy zero by 1/2" was a whole lot easier. Also, Cathy is pretty handy with that bondo and it didn’t take much to fill and clean up the holes.
Gary - You should be extremely proud of this project. For me, your project is very timely. I vowed that I was going to stay away from signs, but my church wants a 56"x28" sign and we are looking to go 3D as opposed to V-carve on 2" 20# HDU. I have a 4x4 5 Pro so this will be my first tiling job. I truly want to texture the background and I love your results. I downloaded your Golf Sample file and will try the settings for the texture. About your 1/2" ball bit - Can you provide the tool information about this bit? I am thinking about testing my file on a piece of insulation foam from Lowes. This HDU is pretty expensive to make a mistake on.
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