The family run business of Sunset Signs, in County Armagh, Northern Ireland, recently showed how ArtCAM can help your business achieve success. Sunset Signs was nominated and later received a commendation award in the Craftsman category at this years UK Sign Industry Awards.
Sunset signs was started up in 1990 and has built up a reputation of excellence over the last 14 years, Through successfully combining traditional skills with modern technology. Wesley McCreary, joint owner of Sunset signs explains more:
There has been a lot of changes in the sign industry over the last 10 years and we pride ourselves on using all our knowledge and skills in traditional techniques... We couple these skills with computer technology and up-to-date CNC equipment to produce outstanding results"
Sunset Signs bought ArtCAM Pro in October last year and within a week of his training course Wesley had designed and machined the piece which was later nominated for the Sign Industry award. The Piece which won the commendation is the 3D Crest design shown in fig 1.
In his own words Wesley describes the process of creating the Crest...
"Crest was created from a Jpeg drawing which was vectorised and edited. The vectorised version was then imported into ArtCAM Pro. To create the reliefs I decided to visit Delcam for a standard 4 day training course at their headquarters in Birmingham.
I came home and started work on the crest which took probably 7 days, as I was still getting to grips with the software, Most of the crest is made from 2 rail sweeps. I found it was the only way I could get the leaves to flow the way I wanted. The leaves and knights helmet I found to be the greatest challenge. I decided to make crest from 40mm thick sign rock. Machining at crest took about 8 hours using a 3mm bull nose cutter. It was then primed and gilded with silver leaf & 23 1/4 carat gold leaf. The leopard was airbrushed and the rest hand painted and mounted on 5mm perspex backing."
If you would like to find out more about Sunset Signs and the excellent services they can provide, you can contact them by emailing info@sunsetsigns.co.uk or by visiting the Sunset Signs website.