It's never easy saying goodbye to a colleague as they start a next chapter in their career journey. But it's even harder to come up with the right kind of gift to tell them how much you value their time with your team. Recently, we took on the challenge of designing and fabricating just such a gift for one of our colleagues.
@SO and I worked with our colleagues and friend, @JS, to capture meaningful moments in this custom keepsake. Since our colleague, Nikhil, has focused primarily on SOLIDWORKS Drawings during the time he has been with us, we thought that it would be cool to capture his key milestones on an engineering drawing that was engraved on a piece of acrylic. After we sketched and brainstormed on the white board, John took to SOLIDWORKS and modeled up the final look and feel. He sent me the DXF of the SOLIDWORKS Drawing. I prepared it for laser engraving and cutting while John took on fabricating the wooden base.
I wanted to give the acrylic engraved drawing some color, so I decided to cut out some red and white pieces for the SOLIDWORKS cube. | |
I laser cut two cover pieces, the clear one on top and the frosted one for the back to enhance the visibility of the engraving. |
I inverted the graphics and engraved on the back side of the acrylic to create a more polished look. Once cleaned and assembled with some off-the-shelf hardware, it was ready to be installed on the base. |
There was a bit of a miscalculation on my part (oops) where I oversized the acrylic.
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Luckily, with some quick thinking on Sal's part, a bit of work on the band saw and some rubber-mallet finessing, we were able to get the acrylic to fit in the base. It was a great gift fitting a Thank-you for 22 years of wonderful contributions.
