Beta Project: 1:12 Scale Bench

I would take it home and give it TLC for recovery and therapy.

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That is one very small portion of the Glowforge test print.

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Sweet, that test print sounds like loads of fun to see.

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@RyanL this is TOTALLY right up my alley. I’m primarily going to be using my glowforge for miniatures and model making.

for my version of the ikea poang :smiley:

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Very cool! I’ve been thinking about how I can expand the GF’s capabilities by using other tools and methods; building steam boxes to bend plywood, line benders to bend plexiglass, etc. You can build anything.

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@coanderss You’re stuff is great!

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Thanks @RyanL ! Can’t wait to see more of your work!

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Here she is: @MiniMouse

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I love the miniature bench!

Thank you @PIGHEADED and @cmreeder for the shoutout. :blush:

Ohhh, the “endurance test” piece has a myriad of possibilities in the mini world… and is one of the reasons I bought one. :smiley: So glad it’s going to be able to deliver on my hopes/expectations!

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I’m hoping to use a defocused beam to do line bends in acrylic…

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Yes, the examples I have seen of that were exemplary of laser precision. Fast even heating and then gravity drops it perfectly.

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That works but there’s not much vertical height to support anything but shallow things in the GF.

I just made myself a Kleenex holder for the car last night. It’s a piece of 1/8" acrylic that wraps around the box and hangs over the pocket of the front seat. Gets the box off the floor of the car :slight_smile:

I cut it out on the laser but I can’t defocus on the fly so I just did the bends using a heat gun. I thought “if I had the GF I could do these using defocused cuts/scores” and then realized I couldn’t because the bulk of the bends needed to result in a multi-inch vertical drop.

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But we may be able to defocus without relying on Z height. Much the same as staying IN focus on curved surfaces.

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Yeah but only for little stuff if you’r going to have gravity do the bending after the laser does the heating.

My Kleenex box is one of those small ones - like 6x5x1.5". The holder has a back plate, a piece that flips over the pocket in the seat back, sides & bottoms and then smaller front pieces (so you can still get the Kleenex out). I could have cut all the individual pieces and then glued them (thought about that when I was heat gunning it too :slight_smile: ) but I thought it would be nicer if it had all the rounded edges of a heat formed box.

So I cut what was essentially a large cruciform shape. Then I heated up a side, bent it over and then heated up a part of that to fold over again to form the front. That meant the first fold had a 3" piece that then got folded again to form the 1.5" side and the corresponding 1.5" front. The GF doesn’t have room for the 3" drop. It might just make it for the side if there wasn’t the front fold and only had to do the 1 1/2" side piece. Ditto the bottom/front. The back is a 4" foldover so wouldn’t work at all.

The pictures show what I’m talking about. Couldn’t use gravity. Might have been able to lase a line, take it out, bend it and then lase another line to do it but then I’d have to worry about registration in terms of getting it in the right place on the bed each time and in the end, the heat gun was a better solution.

[edit: missed the pics]
In use. No glue - all a single piece.

Side/bottom bends/folds.

This is version 1. I’ve fixed the design to cut away the lower side corner in a rounded swoop and curve off the top of the front wings where they’re squared off now.

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Gotcha, that would not fit at all.
Nice work by the way!

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It’s what’s fun about having a laser.

I always have a box of Kleenex kicking around the car. They usually get stepped on, dirty, kicked around and then thrown out. I could find a holder that put it on the drivetrain hump but then if there’s ever 3 people in the back seat it’s in the way.

But I have a laser. I have acrylic. I have a heat gun. Now I have a Kleenex holder that isn’t in the way and is easy to get to and easy to refill (just drop in a new box). I found that size on Amazon - I’ve seen them before in hotels, etc. Big enough but not too deep to knock knees on. As you can see, it’s a dust magnet though from the acrylic. I just made it last night so I’m hoping the static electricity will dissipate.

I could have made it with the 3D printer but that would have taken forever to print. The cut took about 2 minutes and then about 20 minutes mucking about with the heat gun. Version 2 will be faster :slight_smile:

It’s the core of the whole “maker” thing - no one else makes what I want but I can. In some ways it’s a very cool time to be alive. (Our forebears used to have to do the same but they often didn’t have access to the tools or materials to make what they wanted and had to do without.)

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THIS! Underscored.

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