Thanks! I saw that the other day. Was going to try it, but I wasn’t getting it. Now that I’ve made a spinner, I understand. Maybe I’ll try it on the next one.
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That’s rad! Love the throwing star design. Tell your son, “Nice work!”. 
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He says thanks! He’s visibly proud every time I tell him somebody commented about his design. 
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Nice work Tom, but I wanted to comment on this interesting point you made here. Quite a few people complain about Glowforge calling itself a 3D laser printer. Here we have an owner stating that he printed a prototype using the machine. Maybe they are not wrong to call it a printer. A point for Glowforge. Thanks Tom.
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Thanks! All credit goes to my son, Andy on this one. I was just the monkey that pushed the buttons. 
I’m one of those people. I’ve said it before and I’ll go ahead and say it again… using the term 3D printer is marketing at its worst. Trying to jump on the 3D printer bandwagon that was really all the rage at the time. Let’s face it… if you had a Glowforge and a 3D printer sitting next to each other, and anybody in the universe asked you “Are these 3D printers?” You’d say “This one is. And this one’s a laser cutter.” There’s no chance in heck that the answer would be some crazy “Yes they are! This one uses melted extruded materials, and this one uses a laser. They’re both the same tool but use different methods.” It’s simply not true. (And, yes… I realize that in the strictest sense of the word, “printer” is applicable. But I wouldn’t call it appropriate.)
I use the word “print” because it’s convenient. Watching the Glowforge etch, reminds me very much of a print device… The head moves across, images appear. To say “I cut the prototype on cardboard.” seems awkward to me. I dunno. Maybe I’ll have to try that on for a while.
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preach.
honestly i think it’s mostly because you’re unused to it. cut for cutting, engraving for everything else. i tend to reserve “etch” for materials like glass (or stone, etc) where the engraving is very slight. part of the reason it sounds a little forced is that most people would probably say ‘out of’ cardboard rather than on it (…unless your glowforge is sitting on cardboard 
).
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Probably. I think I’ll try to use the correct terms from now on. It’s probably best for all.
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before anyone says anything i did not say you were incorrect ;p
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YES. As suggested by @jjmacdougall and @henryhbk, spraying them w/ WD-40 and letting them dry out wrapped in paper towel for 24 hours REALLY did the trick. We compared to an existing spinner and literally got the exact same spin time.
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I’ve been laser cutting spinners for a month or so now, and have had nothing but good results. I use a Trotec 300 at the Techshop while I’m waiting for my Glowforge letter to get here. The one I’ve been the happiest with was two layers, clear acrylic on one side and walnut on the other. Both sides are engraved with a circuitry pattern, with three arms. Each arm has a hole cut out for a metal nut to weight them down.
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Nice! Love the pattern! We were just talking about doing a pattern on the next one. We almost went with wood. But, instead, went with the two different color acrylics. To be honest, when we ordered this acrylic it was supposed to be transparent. So the idea was we’d get some cool color effects depending how you hold it. But this is most definitely opaque and we were pretty disappointed when we peeled off the tape and saw that.
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Hey @Tom_A I know its been more than a week, but tell Andy that spinner looks fantastic. Get him another smile. He’s a great designer.
I will!!! Thanks!
He told me the other day he’s got a new design in mind. I have no other detail yet.