Julie and Carl of Scoops Ice Cream & Candies of Kenosha, approached new Makerspace member, Brandon Minga, with their project. They were given recommendations from other projects he’s done in the are including Mike’s Chicken & Donuts and the Modern Apothecary. Scoops was looking to enhance and draw more attention to their new location with a large exterior sign. Going through the concept and design process Minga quickly decided that the sign design was also going to become their new logo. Once the final design was rendered he quickly learned how to CNC a template to hand plasma trace the design out of sheet metal. The middle of the sign was also hand cut, roll bent and broke to match the bubbly ice cream cone shape. With a little help from friends a the Makerspace, he ground down welds and drilled 44 holes for the light bulbs. After all the holes were drilled Minga fit the sign with sockets, wired up the sockets and tested the electrical. Working with Prodigy Sign in Kenosha he also coordinated the hanging of the sign.

Any project starts with a sketch.

Nothing wrong with learning a little g-code.

 

A post shared by Mingadigm (@brandonminga) on May 2, 2017 at 12:47pm PDT

Took that g-code and used the handmade CNC router to cut out a template (note to self, don’t use OSB for plasma templates).

Traced template with hand plasma cutter.

Hand cut, roll bent, metal break and tack welded the bottom shell.

Hand cut and used the break to bend my own c-channel for the stabilizing guts of the sign.

A little help from my friends!

 

A post shared by Mingadigm (@brandonminga) on Mar 31, 2017 at 3:33pm PDT

A little custom install and wiring….and we have lights!

Can’t forget the paint! Primed inside and out, the sign got coated with some retro color.

Installation day was very windy, they called two crews in to stabilize the sign as they anchored it to the building.

This is a Mingadigm.com by Brandon Minga

This project was done at the Milwaukee Makerspace,  thank you, gang!

Recently, I’ve been doing some work sandblasting. Because Pi Day was coming up (March 14 – 3.14), and I just happened to have a stack of Pyrex pie pans handy, I thought I’d go ahead and try making my own custom Pi Pans.

I started by designing a logo in Illustrator. Well, that’s not quite right. I actually did an image search for “Pi”, saved a .bmp, and then TRACED it in Illustrator. Once in vector format, the image can be re-sized and have the stroke and fill colors changed, all non-destructively. When I was happy with the logo, I printed one out on plain paper. Then, I cut it out and taped it to the back of a pie pan. This gave me a real-world mock-up to make sure I liked what I had BEFORE going through the trouble of making a vinyl stencil and sandblasting.

Next, I exported my image as a .DXF file, and then opened it in Silhouette Studio, the software that runs the CNC vinyl cutter machine. In studio, I made sure the image was still scaled correctly, then positioned it where I wanted it on the 12″x12″ cutting area. The last thing I did before cutting was to FLIP the image. Since I would be sandblasting on the BACK of a glass pie pan, the image needs to be flipped so it is viewed correctly from the front.

The Silhouette Cameo cutter cuts out the pattern quickly and automatically, taking about a minute for the whole process.

I removed the vinyl, and cut it into quarters, as I was able to fit four stencils on a single page. I then peeled away the “Pi” logo, leaving the vinyl around it. This is because I am making a stencil. I want the sandblaster to hit the glass where the vinyl does NOT protect it. This will etch the shape of Pi and leave the glass around it clear.

I used transfer tape to place the Pi logo stencil on the back of the pie pan, and then removed the transfer tape. Next, I covered the rest of the back of the glass with regular masking tape. At this point, the pie pan is ready for sandblasting.

I put the pan into the blast cabinet and set the pressure regulator to about 70 PSI. Anywhere from 60-80 works pretty well. Higher pressure than that can start to cut into the vinyl. I simply held the pie pan in one hand and pointed the sandblaster gun at it with the other. It’s much like spray painting – just pull the trigger and try to give a nice even coat.

Once done sandblasting, I pulled the pan out of the cabinet and peeled away all the masking. Next, I washed it with soap and water in the utility tub and then dried it.

The finished effect turned out pretty well. The Pi is a very prominent white frosted character on a clear background. Most people catch the visual pun of “Pi Plate” right away.

Besides the Pi Plate, I also came up with “Apple Pi” and “Raspberry Pi” designs based on popular computer company logos. Both of those turned out very well.

By that time, I was starting to feel pretty confident in my stencil design and sandblasting skills, and I wanted to make a “Cherry Pi” logo, but realized that there is already a great pattern for that – the album art from Warrant’s 1990 album “Cherry Pie”.

I spend some time in the vector software painstakingly tracing the artwork into a simplified vector. Next, I made a cutting from vinyl. All of the fine lines were tricky to peel off with a pair of Xacto knives. Once I finally had the finished stencil applied to another pie pan, it was time to sandblast.

After that, I simply peeled off the masking to reveal my WARRANT CHERRY PIE pan. My wife’s birthday happens to be March 14th – Pi Day. She’s a fan of late 80’s/early 90’s rock, so gave her the CHERRY PIE pan (with a home-baked cherry pie in it) as a Pi Day/Birthday gift. She got a kick out of it.

How about you? Have you ever personalized some glassware through etching? A “Please return this pan to….” etching sounds like a good idea for pot-lucks! If you have done some etching, post a photo or link! Otherwise, send your ideas for other cool glass etching on up cycled kitchen-ware!

Til next time, keep making something of yourself,

-Ben

Happy New Year!

We had quite a night at the space! Thursday is “Builder’s Night Out” when we are open to the public, and if you want a tour, want to meet the members, or have a project you need help on, bring it down. Last night we helped Gary work on a project for his BarCamp session on Rubik’s Cubes. (And let me tell you, using PVC on the belt grinder creates a white dust the likes of which you’ve never seen before!)

Team Kegbot (also known as Kevin, Jason, and Adam) did a bunch of Arduino hacking, and made some progress. They may have also imbibed some of the malted beverages in the name of science.

I even got to contribute to the Kegbot project when Jason asked for a 64×64 1-bit file of the Milwaukee Makerspace logo. Of course he then demanded a 48×48 logo. (I’m just glad he didn’t ask for a 32×32 or the dreaded 16×16!)

Brant spent a little time with the Mini-CNC Mill trying to cut a key out of a piece of plastic. I offered to try printing a key on the MakerBot, but he got it done with the mill. (Plastic seemed to lack the strength needed for the key though, and we may look at a stronger material next time.)

As for me? Besides helping out other folks, I managed to get a little quality time with the MakerBot, and printed a few more cookie cutter designs, which we should be testing this weekend. I did a little bit of web site updating as well, which is always an on-going effort.

And you know what happens next week Thursday? Builder’s Night Out! Yup, every Thursday… so come on down and hang out with us!

Ron took our logo in .svg format and used an Inkscape plugin to generate the Gcode:

http://wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/emcinfo.pl/emcinfo.pl?InkscapeHowto