Dan Sawatzky’s house is the best advertisement for his business, Imagination Corporation in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. The house looks almost like a hobbit hole, with a large round window in front and the pillars holding up the roof looking like old tree trunks. What looks like a half wall of river stones surrounds the house. But the trees and the wall were all carved using a CNC router.
丹·萨瓦基的房子成为他的同行中最有吸引力的广告，这主要归功于位于加拿大奇利瓦克的想象力标识公司，他们的产品都独一无二，在行业中独树一帜。丹·萨瓦基的房子看起来就像一个霍比特人的洞，店铺正面有扇大的圆形窗户，支撑屋顶的柱子看起来就像老树干。房子周围看起来像河里的石头筑成的半堵墙，但其实老树干和石墙都是用CNC雕刻的。
Imagination Corporation considers itself a sign shop but it operates under a different business model than its competitors.
想象力标识公司是一家创造标识的商铺，但其经营模式与竞争对手不同。
“We turn away nine out of 10 people who come to our door. The only ones we are interested in are the ones that have the best projects, the most crazy projects,” says Sawatzky, owner and founder of Imagination Corporation.
想象力标识公司创始人Sawatzky说：“我们拒绝了90%到我们门前的人。我们唯一感兴趣的是那些最有创意的项目，最疯狂的项目。
He and his team ask five questions before taking on any project: Will it be fun? Does the customer trust us? Do we have enough time? Will it bring us closer to work we want to do in the future? Is there enough money?
在参与任何项目之前，他和他的团队会提出五个问题：这会很有趣吗?客户信任我们吗?我们有足够的时间吗?它会让我们更接近未来想做的工作吗?有足够的预算吗?
“We only want to be known for work we want to do,” he says. He appreciates the clients who give him free rein to be creative and have a decent budget for the project so he doesn’t have to limit his imagination.
他说：“我们只是想让客户清楚，我们只喜欢做一些有趣而又大胆的工作，我很感谢那些可以让我们随意发挥创造力的客户，既给了我们充足的预算，又不必限制自己的想象力。”
He uses 30-lb. Precision Board or higher for all of the company’s projects, which is much denser than the industry standard of 15- to 20-lb. board. The big reason is that it is stronger than the lighter weight high-density urethane.
行业标准的精密板是15-20磅，而他们所有公司项目使用的精密板是30磅。最大的原因是它比重量更轻的高密度聚氨酯更坚固。
The company puts a tremendous amount of work into its pieces. Sawatzky says lighter weight HDU is so fragile, it would crumble under the amount of detail that he and his team put into each piece.
这家公司把工作分配到各个部门。Sawatzky说重量较轻的HDU非常容易损坏，对他们来说，每个细节都具有非常大的挑战性。
Most of the company’s cutting is done on a 3-axis MultiCam router, which “allows us to work quickly and with higher precision, and that’s important,” he says.
该公司的大部分切割是在一个三轴的数控机床上完成的，他说：“这让我们能够快速，高精度地工作，这很重要。”
Most of his competitors use the machine and hand work to make a project look like it was done by machine. Sawatzky wants his work that comes off the router to look like it was done by hand.
其他的标识公司一般用机器和手工协作完成工作，所以标识成品看起来就是实打实是机械制品，而Sawatzky的初衷就是让每一件出自想象力标识公司的作品都像是纯手工打造。
“We purposely add texture so it looks hand done. That adds tremendous value in today’s world. I work very quickly, but the router will do it five times faster. It will do all of the grunt work so it allows us to put in the hand work afterwards,” he says.
他说：“我们特意添加了纹理，让它看起来像是手工制作的。”这给当今世界带来了巨大的价值。机器的速度是人工速度的五倍，所以它将完成所有繁重的工作，这样我们就可以把手工工作放在最后。”
Imagination Corporation paints all projects by hand and also does sculpting with sculpting epoxy when necessary.It uses its CNC plasma to incorporate brackets into its designs.
想象力标识公司手工绘制所有项目，并在必要时使用环氧树脂进行雕刻。它使用CNC等离子技术将支架结合到设计中 。
“Everything tells the story, from the brackets all in. We are storytellers. Everything we do we put a story to it and tell that story visually,” he says.
创造一个标识就是在讲述一个故事，只是讲故事的方式是通过视觉感受罢了。
For the pictured Copper Crown, the sign company showed how well the metal pieces were integrated into the carved signs. The leafy bracket was plasma cut steel and the structure of it goes into the actual sign as well as the mounting plates on the wall.
对于图中的铜冠，标识公司展示了金属件如何才能很好地融入到雕刻的标识中。用等离子切割钢的叶形托架作为标识以及墙上的安装板的结构。
The signs the company did for a themed inn incorporate plasma-cut steel as well. In the Northstar sign, you see a black line behind the compass rose. That structure goes through the sign. Some of it is exposed and some is not, he says. The Under Hill sign also has a steel structure that goes through it. Elements of the key were cut with the plasma cutter. The leafy bracket and big lock are also steel.
该公司为一家主题酒店设计的标识也采用了等离子切割钢材。在标识“北极星”上，你可以看到罗盘玫瑰后面有一条黑线。那个结构穿过了标识。“Under Hill” 标识也有一个贯穿它的钢结构，用等离子切割器切割出关键部件，叶形托架和锁也是钢制的。
“That becomes indestructible and easily mounted because there is a steel structure in it,” Sawatzky says.
Sawatzky说:“因为里面有钢结构，因此变得坚不可摧并且易于安装”
CNC routers are being used for everything from 3D sculptures and ice sculptures to set making for movie or theater production, embossing designer handbags and precision cutting for the aerospace industry, says Josh Hooley, digital marketing specialist at AXYZ International, a manufacturer of CNC routers.
CNC数控设备制造商AXYZ 国际公司的数字营销专家乔希•胡利(Josh Hooley)表示，从3D雕塑和冰雕，到电影或影院制作、压花设计师手包和航空航天行业的精密切割，CNC数控设备无所不及。
“It provides businesses with a clear competitive advantage over those who rely on more traditional/manual methods,” he says. “A CNC allows businesses to ramp up their operations, increasing productivity, cutting costs and competing for projects/contracts they wouldn’t have previously been able to.”
他表示:“与那些更依赖传统手工方法的企业相比，它为企业提供了明显的竞争优势。CNC帮助各大企业扩展了业务，提高生产率，削减成本，并开始竞争他们以前无法实现的项目。”
Roger Cox, owner and creative director of House of Signs in Frisco, Colorado, says that his work is in high demand both locally and internationally.“It has to do with the aesthetics of the designs we create and the uniqueness of the way we approach and build signs. It is not really seen with too many companies,” he says.
科罗拉多州弗里斯科的House of Signs的所有者兼创意总监Roger Cox表示，他的产品在当地和国际上都有很高的需求量。他说：“这与我们创造设计的美学观念和我们处理建造标识的独特方式有关。这在太多公司中并不常见。”
The company invested in its first CNC machine back in 2000. At that point in time, Cox was focusing on creating visually dynamic carved signs and was spending a lot of time hand-carving everything.“The end result was fantastic but the efficiency was very low,” he says.
早在2000年，该公司就投资了第一台数控机床。在那个时候，Cox专注于创造视觉上动态的雕刻标识，花了很多时间手工雕刻所有的东西。 “最终的结果非常棒，但效率很低，”他说。
The CNC router “opened up a whole new world, specifically some years later when we were integrating 3-dimensional software into our work, that essentially becomes yet another realm that again could have been achieved by hand but would have been that much more labor-intensive to create a 2.5D or 3D piece,” Cox says.
Cox说：“CNC数控开辟了一个全新的世界，特别是几年后我们将三维软件集成到我们的工作中时，这基本上成为了另一个可以手工实现的领域，但如果要制作2.5D或3D的作品，就会需要更多的人力资源。”
Most sign shops use a 3-axis router, meaning it can mill half of a cylinder or half of a full-contoured sphere because it moves front to back, side to side and up and down. The 3-axis and 4-axis machines provide the most amount of detail so that’s why most sign shops stick with these two routers.
大多数标识店使用的是三轴数控机床，三轴意味着它可以削去圆筒的一半或球体的一半，因为它可以前后移动，左右移动，上下移动。三轴和四轴的机器可以完成最多的细节，这就是为什么大多数标识店坚持使用这两种机器。
To create some of the more ambitious projects and signage, the company spends a lot of time upfront working in dimensioning software to make sure the cuts are in the right place and the different layers take shape before it is even sent to the router.“The level of detail we are asking our CNCs to do is really quite phenomenal,” he says.
为了制造一些更加骄傲的项目和标识，该公司花费大量时间在尺寸标注软件上工作，以确保切割位于正确的位置，并且在将它们发送到机器 |
