Custom Shaped Banks: Banking Journey Begins!
I can finally produce custom shaped banks at SandboxRanch.com, something I’ve been wanting to do since the inception of this business but had to drop aside as I got a million other issues, that are now sorted out.
You can actually see my very first production (prototype?) run at SandboxRanch.com in the video below, that’s when I learned that I have A LOT MORE TO LEARN before being able to produce quality custom shaped banks and more importantly, repeatable results that were ship-ready from the machine.
If you notice closely, very little of what I did in this first run six months ago was actually done in the last one, there has been an incredible evolution in workflow and process start to finish, with the most important stuff like software optimizing, happening off-screen.
The biggest change to the shop and production of these (in this case) custom shaped banks is the huge 12 000 pound CNC router I got to help make these banks as perfect as possible right off the machine, the less work I have to do before and after the making of these banks, the better it is regarding making A LOT of them in short order for SandboxRanch.com customers.
I’ve found chamfering is a very popular option for the banks we make, it helps break the edge so that it isn’t sharp and best of all, gives me a reference on the laminated red oak to make sure my positioning is accurate when it comes to making them.
Having a tool changer has allowed me an incredible amount of flexibility when it comes to making these custom shaped banks especially, so much so, that one of the upgrades I’ll do in the future is adding more tooling options as I want to further customize the production of these banks with more neat options for SandboxRanch.com customers.
For this run, a few different custom shaped banks were made, a helicopter bank, heart bank, tractor bank, elephant bank, pig bank, f22 bank and a submarine bank.
You will notice that in addition to the wine bottle bank that there was also a beer bank in the mix, but I forgot to make the bottom flat in the design, so that will rock, thus hitting back the design file to make an update to redo that one in the future properly.
There are so many ways to make these custom shaped banks at SandboxRanch.com, literally anything can be made into a bank, animal, sketch, photograph… it never ends, and that’s where the fun begins!
For these custom shaped banks, the goal was to prototype that all the design lessons I learned during the initial square letter banks can be applied to them, it took months of these lessons to get things down to the point where all of these custom shaped banks worked out great right off the bat, except the beer mug, due to an oversight.
I feel like the journey has really just begun for SandboxRanch.com, there is so much to do now that most of the heavy work is behind me, and all our customers can benefit greatly from this.
It’s so nice having all the headaches and problems sorted out now to the point where whatever can be imagined can be made into a custom shaped bank, not just for kids but adults and corporate events or fundraisers at SandboxRanch.com.
You can see the chips are also looking perfect, this means that the custom bits used to make these custom red oak banks don’t have the massive scotching marks that the initial run did, the cuts are smooth and the results are always fabulous.
There are MANY steps involved with making these custom shaped banks, having access to four tools on the tool changer makes a huge difference and I could always use more, but for everything I produce currently at SandboxRanch.com, this is more than adequate.
Other good news is that I’ve got my laminate gluing technique, from a lot of practice, to the point that the banks are thicker, there is no point in making a custom shaped bank that falls apart for SandboxRanch.com customers because it’s too fragile!
Each step of the production process at SandboxRanch.com when it comes to making these custom shaped banks has been tested repeatedly and continues to be incrementally improved upon run after run.
Now that the CNC router end of things is finished for these custom shaped banks, the next step is cutting them out and then proceeding to the finishing options, including the window cutting and placement.
This has become quite a fun business to run, for once in my life, I can optimize designs and processes continuously, which is something that’s not possible when doing custom fabrication all day at CNCROi.com.
Each and every bank produced at SandboxRanch.com follows roughly these same steps, the shape might be different, the letter a different size, but the steps required to produce a finished product remain the same.
You can see how great these custom shaped banks are looking, they are each and every one, very unique, different wood grain patterns and directions but regardless, the quality of the build is there for each one.
As these are “new” shapes for SandboxRanch.com, I test out the window placement along with other specs using MDF to make sure that everything fits as it should, cost-effectively.
After the MDF checks out, it’s time to make them out of acrylic, which is something that we have greatly invested in to tighten up the supply and quality train of at SandboxRanch.com.
These custom shaped banks are almost done, the acrylic is the last piece of the puzzle that must be complete before these are ready to be shipped out to the customer.
And here are the finished banks in this production run, everything is looking amazing, I’m so proud of all the work I’ve done over the past six months to get to this point with SandboxRanch.com, from developing the website to the actual items on sale there.
On the acrylic front, here are the colors currently available, it’s hard to take a good photo of these so here they are at various angles and backgrounds to help you decide which you want for your custom shaped banks.
Polycarbonate (bullet proof glass) is the same as clear acrylic but the etching is black, and they are dramatically stronger.
Need custom shaped banks? Buy them now at SandboxRanch.com.
