A colleague of mine recently transferred to a different command at the end of his tour. Our command is relatively new and does not yet have an established system to pay for traditional farewell gifts so another colleague who has several 3D printers and I used our powers combined to come up with a little something.
The submarine is a 3D printed model of our ship and the mounts are also 3D printed with threaded holes underneath so I could mount them with bolts through the plaque. The mounts are u-shaped allowing the model to sit for display, but also be easily removed for closer examination.
I tried several times to do the engraving directly on the wood of the plaque but kept getting crazy results due to the significant differences in density between the dark and light grain. After running 6 or 7 tests I got frustrated and decided to switch to acrylic. That worked really well when mirrored and engraved from the back, but mounting it to the wood was questionable. If I put it directly on the wood the engraving all but disappeared so I tried filling the engraving with acrylic paint and markers. Metallic paint pens gave an interesting effect but were not what I was looking for. I then decided that I would have to use standoffs for the acrylic, but based on time constraints I couldn’t get any in time. I ended up using some 1/4" thick stars that I had lying around that were scrap from a previous project. I used one set underneath the acrylic to get the desired offset and another set on top to hide the glue between the acrylic and the first set. I was really pleased with the results.
Very Nice!
