Or since there is a wide angle camera could you hook that up to show a few snapshots of what was in the bed in the past hour?
MDF works really well for living hinges because there is no grain. If you’re using hardwood make sure you don’t orient your hinge across the grain and it will have much more strength.
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You should have someone doing daily youtube videos of doing things on the Glowforge. It is just so cool to watch.
Thought this kind of hinge was brilliant in my Lumio; now to learn how to rig circuitry and weld tyvek:
http://www.hellolumio.com/gallery/
This seems like a good idea. Since there is the camera built into the lid, give the option for recording a time lapse video while you cut 
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Tracked down a box maker and living hinge extension that I got to work with Inkscape for me. http://www.reidb.net/LaserLivingHinges.html. He has a few pictures to illustrate. Also lots of parameters to enter and fiddle with in the extension to make the box. Hadn’t noticed this one before.
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I am curious as to whether a living hinge would work on a thin sheet of acrylic (or other laserable materials other than wood). My gut tells me acrylic would be too brittle for this, but thought it might be worth asking if anyone has ever tried it and has a definitive answer either way.
Unfortunately acrylic will only bend a finite amount and then even a less finite number of times. So I would venture you could cut it but there isn’t enough fibrous material to flex.
You can flex cut on acrylic. But not with the same settings you use on wood. Because (as noted) it is more likely to snap. But as long as you leave larger segments, and preferably you include dog bones, it is workable.
This post has a great technical discussion of living hinges. Acrylic requires special attention, as he mentions later on but it has the math. He has some links with further discussion.
http://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk/blog/2011/laser-cut-lattice-living-hinges/
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I can’t hardly wait to try this. I just could not wrap my head around a material that shatters to have any flex in it at all (at handling temperature).
I would worry about an acrylic living hinge shattering for something like a book cover that will get flexed many times. For something like @marmak3261 's matchbook holder, where the flex will only happen one time as it is being fixed into place, I can easily imagine that working just fine.
What Inkscape version do you have? I’m on the 0.91 version and it seems they have changed their syntax a bit which makes this extension throw an error. I’m not a software guy so I’m just taking random stabs at what to change and seeing what affects it has on the error messages!
UPDATED: I figured it out myself. Had to re-write a little bit of the code due to the syntax change. It works for the parameters used on the website. I’m more than willing to email the modified .py file for anyone to use on the 0.91 version of Inkscape (I don’t have a way to upload it to a website unless someone suggested something). You’ll still have to get the .INX file from the original link.
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I have 0.48 on my Windows PC. I could get the box maker and the living hinge with the Laser Tools from Original Author – Elliot White, forked by Reid Borsuk. I couldn’t get the Mark Endicott one to work. You could PM me with the modified .py content. I tried to make sense of it, but python I do not know. Haven’t done much work on living hinges and won’t until I have a forge to play with since so much of it depends on materials. Thanks for the work.
0.91 includes a few laser ready goodies, like Hershey Text. I cannot remember if it packages the box maker in as well.
I have a cousin who does scroll saw work and she likes to use walnut oil. I’m sure there are a lot of similar ways to keep the wood from drying out quickly.
Thanks. I didn’t pay attention to versioning for Inkscape on my Windoze machine. I’m so used to the auto-updates with Ubuntu repositories for my Linux machine. Will remedy that.
Had no clue what that was but thought it had something to do with making candy wrappers. Nice extension. It makes lettering one stroke for the CNC machine to read rather than outline and fill. Once again, if you can think of a better way to do it with the computer, someone has already come up with the solution and usually there is a free version! Ok. After wrestling with figuring out how to run explorer on windows 10 as administrator, I have all the extensions working. Wow. The more you know.
I just ordered my Glowforge and am quite excited! We own a stationery store where we make everything we sell and I think a living hinge journal is just what the shop needs!
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