grain fraim or cnc

[dakers]

purpose of this post is to revisit the sandblast texture using HDU.
questions:
1. who uses grain fraim with cnc to do texture
2. who just uses cnc to do the texture

i am thinking of jumping back into sandblasting with grain fraim purchase to get texture because the last texture we put on a small 18x24 size one sided hdu sign took about 7 hours with the shopbot

i to not know the life of the 2.2 motor but have some big jobs coming up.
i have the blast cabinet with recovery and vacuum that you can slide hdu in from the side with 100 lb pressure pot and 5hp compressor.
i bought it on craigslist and you can blast a sign 6ft high by any length.
but never hooked it up because i just would rather go on a bike ride and am not crazy about blasting again like i did 20 years ago.

any thoughts?
blast away please

[robtown]

Large number of signs or low margin = grain frame...

Unless it's a situation where you can double up on your time and do something else productive while the bot carves away. But you'll still need to be able to babysit the machine.

Then there's the dust and static to consider. I don't care how good your collection system is, if you are going to do long carving runs you'll have dust everywhere...

[roy_shimp]

Dick - i have Enroute Pro and although it has woodgrain textures they can take a very long time. However EnRoute also has a tool called Rapid Texture which, what it sounds like is rapid. The difference between the conventional wood texture and the rapid texture is that rapid texture has no z movements. It is not difficult to create a wood grain effect in Rapid Texture. Try this site for mote info. http://www.enroutesoftware.com
Look under the Rapid Texture tab and under the signs tab. Hope it helps. Roy

[jerry_stanek]

Aspire has a texture tool also

[dakers]

we bought the grain fraim and rented a diesel towable compressor. we were able to blast 16 sq ft sign in less than 30 minutes. The results were predictable as the grain fraim pattern does look generic compared to cnc texture. i have heard sandblasted signs were on their way out from many of our peers. i can see why. the cnc texture is so much nicer. But my goal is get production to where we can produce one 4x8ft sign as example in one work day (approx) from start to finish for some of our lower cost products. we purchased one of the newer graco truecoat pro airless sprayers and it does a fantastic job with latex.
we also dialed in our spray painting with two component auto enamel. we are now using nason fulcry2 NASON 422-50 2k urethane sealer on the hdu instead of the gray primer. shoot about 3 coats of sealer then 3 coats of the nason two component auto paint. the results are much better than when we used the gray primer. but like anything this may change as we try to dial in better methods as we learn more. i like the Nason because we can put stencil mask on it then rout then paint the letters and not have the mask lift the top coat when we take it off. the cost of the nason seems to be about $70.00 to do one side of a 4x8 hdu. just reporting what we are doing that works and hoping to always learn more from mistakes.

[chiloquinruss]

Saw this fellows work over on the Vectric forum and went to his website. He has some sharware software that looks very interesting for cnc folks. This particular one peeked my interest. I have NOT tried it yet. Russ

http://paulrowntree.weebly.com/standing-waves.html