Epoxy resin filled laser etched fractal cutting board

[bbum]

After sanding… before polyurethane (as this is just a test piece and will go in the “examples” pile and not the “daily use” pile ).

[Jules]

Interesting idea. Would the resin damage knives though? (Although it would make a great display technique.)

[bbum]

Yes-- I suspect that the resin will damage knife blades. It is hard stuff. Had to sand it with 36 grit paper to get the overpour off!

But it’ll make a fine cheese board!

[rbtdanforth]

Interesting Fractal design

[bbum]

I made it with a fractal design program on an iPad. Pretty neat little app. As it turns out, you can put an iPad in the GlowForge and trace designs straight from the screen! (I didn’t do that in this case-- this one was saved off as a PNG so I could muck about with it, which I didn’t do either).

[rbtdanforth]

I might look. I have one that mainly just makes a lot of interesting round Avatars. They are pretty but a lot like trying to collect every possible snowflake design.
I knew someone who tried to collect every dragon picture on the Internet and finally realized that the Internet was bigger than his hard drive . Even just the part with pictures of dragons These Avatars are beginning to feel that way.

[janet_schrock]

That’s a very interesting thought:

@bbum

trace designs straight from the screen!

I’m intrigued by the effects of transitions from digital to analog - (pixels to engraving) and from one machine to another (iPad to GF). I explored this a little while working on my Ph.D. in the 70’s. I used a camera, had the photo scanned to digital, printed the result (very crude output in those days) and then translated that to my sewing machine. My professor did something similar in that he went from a computer program to printer to silkscreen to print. I don’t think he was looking for the effects of transitions, but I saw them. I think transitions help us to see things in different ways.

[pauline.lally]

I like the design choice.

[bbum]

Here is an example of scanning from an iPad:

Optimizations for scanning from an iPad

It would be helpful to have a “scan from tablet” mode that: Turns off the lights in the glowforge, using the [suggest maximum brightness?] tablet as the light source. This both looks sharper and eliminates glare. Adjusts the focus of the camera to be ~0.25-~0.3 inches to improve the focus. This is what it looks like with the lights on: [46%20AM] And this is with the lights obscured by electrical tape: [49%20AM] BTW: It works really well. [IMG_0149]