Hello all! I know the last time I posted in the “What did you cut today?” topic I made mentioned my next project was to be a 32ft Viking ship. Well here it is:
It is not a full fledged, floating ship. It is a prop for my son’s high school marching band competition show. it is made out of 1in insulation foam sheets with a 1/8in hard board backing. I used spray adhesive to fix the hard board to the foam. I used Carbide create to manipulate the Viking ship .svg into the 5 sections (the 3 center sections are just about 8ft long), and then cut them on the Maslow. used a 1/4in single flute upcut for most of it. on a couple of the shields I did use a 1/8in single flute upcut for some of the design work. RPM varied between 10-13k, with a feed rate of about 600mm/min.
The dragon head is about 7ft. tall. You can see that in the pic as it is next to the side door for my garage.
All the pieces after they were all cut. I did a couple of coats of polycrylic just to help protect it before the school’s art department painted it to it’s current colors. We intend to give it a bit more color, particularly on the shields there on the side of the ship. Speaking of, I also cut 24" circles that another dad painted and outfitted to be shields for the colorguard to use during their performance, I just didn’t get a pic of them.
I did have to closely monitor it as it got to the edges, and though it is not perfect, it works for the intended purpose. The only issue I have was the depth of cut. I had to stop and get my Meticulous Z-axis cut and put together to have enough travel to get to the 1.125in depth, and I had a bit of flex in the cut once it hit the hard board. I am not sure if that is from my mount being PETG and flexing, or the fact I was cutting so deep that there was a lot of leverage force it was encountering, or a combination of both. We’ll see on my next project, whatever that may be.
And that’s it for now. I am trying to figure out what I am going to cut next, though I may hold off as I was working on moving my machine onto a new, wall-hung, hinged frame with a skirt around the cutting area. I wanted to upgrade to a 12ft top beam, but I realized I just don’t have the room for it in my garage.
