Thanks Coach!

It's undeniable that a good coach can have a major impact on someone's life. Their impact reaches far beyond the field, leaving an everlasting mark on families and communities. That's why this week, we're making three gifts to say thank you to the coaches that guided our niece and her teammates through a successful softball season.

These hanging plaques featuring the team's logo were designed in xDesign and fabricated using a few different digital fabrication techniques. 

 

I first imported a picture of the logo. Using the picture-to-sketch capabilities helped me save time over having to otherwise manually trace all the curves. Once I cleaned up the sketch, I offset some lines to blockout the base pieces.

 

I exported a DXF of plywood pieces so we could cut them on the CNC...

...and 3D printed the letters and custom eyes I designed to give the vipers a bit of attitude 🙂 

 

 

 

 

I also modeled lettering that I cut on my Cricut vinyl cutter and applied it to the plywood to customize the gift for each coach. Before the gifts were given to the coaches, the team members added their own messages to the coach in the bottom coils of the wall hanging.

As an added touch, I modeled and 3D printed miniature Viper keychains customized with each of the girls' jersey number. 

We used SOLIDWORKS to do this so that we could use the custom property technique that Sal showed in this post:

 

 

Be sure to check out this video to see how the whole project came together: 

OurNextMake