This sign was made as a gift to commemorate a trip to Chicago. After designing it in SolidWORKS I went to my engineering advisor to ask for help making it.
It was my first semester of my first year and I wasn't quite sure how to approach a professor with something like this. I had thought at the time that they
would only want to help with school assignments and maybe some advice for industry, I couldn't have been more wrong. My professor was so excited that I
wanted to work on something outside of class and learn how to use the CNC we had just gotten. If I had any advice for people in college it would be to
use the resources available to you, whether it's professors, a wood shop, or a writing lab. I've found that professors
really enjoy it and the relationships you create with them
are invaluable. Not only did this help me become more comfortable with going to professors, it also made me more aware of the resources we had available
to us as students. Until then I didn't know there was a wood/metal shop or that we could use tools like the CNC. This was the first time I realized that
as a college student I was given a lot more responsibility (scary right?).
The base of the sign is made of boards that were too warped to use for much else and the skyline is made of acrylic. I used those LED lights that every college student has
in their dorm room their first year. To "polish" the project I used a router to create nice rounded edges on the wood, did a couple passes with sandpaper, and finished by
using a woodburning pen on to write on the front (woodburning is surprisingly difficult).