After building the port hole for one of his clients, my friend came back to see if I would be interested to fabricate a tree silhouette for the the same client! It will be installed in their nursery! We had a chance to meet to discuss different options, and decided to have it fabricated from steel, to be powder coated, and backlit with LED’s. I purchased the chosen image from shutterstock.com, scaled it to the appropriate size, and started programming for cutting. The tree will be approximately 88″ tall and 92″ wide when all done. Just big enough to still get it powder coated, and able to be carried into the house to its final location. Here are some picture of the cutting process! More next week! Enjoy!
Here is a screen shot of the user interface on my ShopSabre CNC plasma cutting table, showing the 4′ x 8′ cutting area with the torch path in blue after cutting.
The tree will be cut in three pieces because of its finished size. Here is the top portion, trimmed to fit a 4′ x 8′ sheet of 10ga mild steel.
The piece after I removed all the cut off pieces!
Another one of the three pieces, a branch.
I was able to cut the trunk out of a left over piece from the privacy fence I had a chance to build in late fall of last year.
All the pieces waiting for the next step!
Grinding off the dross generated during the cutting process. 36 grit makes easy and quick work!
After having all the pieces cleaned, I wanted to see the whole tree put together. I clamped the pieces on my welding table to get a good look at it.
Here is a closeup of one of the two joints to be welded together on Monday.
