Aluminum composite garden art

On the last day of my internship at Mister Print, I had the opportunity to create a project of my choosing. I could use any of the machines in the shop, but the project had to be started and finished in one day. I had been working with the CNC machine during my time there, and was also interested in using the massive flatbed printer. Combining these two machines, I decided to create some garden art for my mother-in-law.

I began by subtly sussing out her favourite flowers and birds, found high-res images, then laid out the images in a circle shape with a 27 inch diameter.

Since this would be displayed outside near actual flowers, I wanted the colours to be highly saturated. I was also curious to see what colours the printer could reproduce.

Photos of flowers and a hummingbird laid out digitally in the shape of a circle

After deciding on the arrangement of the images, I took the composite into Illustrator and created the outlines which would become the cutting paths for the CNC. I also included two bolt holes for hanging the art.

A screenshot of the Illustrator path outlines for the artwork

Once the artwork and the cut lines were complete, I sent the file to the CNC machine. It cut the shape out of the aluminum composite material using its computer numerical control powers. We printed the artwork onto a piece of paper which acted as a guide for placing the aluminum.

The bare aluminum composite material lying on the printer bed, waiting to be printed

A Fujifilm Acuity printed the artwork onto the aluminum shape. The inks are cured with UV light, ensuring the artwork does not fade outdoors. The final product can be seen below:

The final artwork hanging on the garage wall, between two potted flowers

I had a lot of fun working on this project and I am happy with how it turned out. And my MIL shows it off to all her friends, which is nice.

Next time I create something like this, I will iterate in the following ways:

take the photos myself!
use a smaller cutting bit for better resolution (a few corners of the path were skipped by the CNC as it would not fit)
plan for a more generous bleed (especially apparent on the lily)
widen the colour gradient around the outside of the ring (some portions of the screw holders are unprinted)