I was searching for some examples of something I want to try and ran across the Ponoko blog. They have been working to sell (expensive) laser cutting time for a while, and have a large collection of cool projects collected.
These get a lot cheaper to experiment with when the laser cutter is sitting behind you…
I missed the Ponoko blog before and just thought it was a production service. Holy cow. And @m_raynsford’s site is super duper. And Obrary and their blog is excellent.
I just ran across another really interesting source of ideas.
MIT apparently teaches their architecture students a class called “How To Make (almost) Anything”. The second project they do has to involve “Computer-controlled Cutting/Laser Cutting”.
This site is each students class projects, and the ways they tackle the second project are pretty cool. Some are predictable, some are wildly experimental, some are pretty much flops, it makes a fun twenty minutes of distraction.
I have been following the computational art work of Jared Tarbell since my days of flash programming. Now (after helping found etsy) he has a new company making toys. http://levitated.guru/work/
Lots of cool ideas there, and if you are into comp. art his work is really just amazing. http://levitated.net/exhibit/index.html (needs flash, look quickly as it will soon be unusable)
Will have to work on transferring this to thinner stock. Would make epic Christmas gift boxes with a little ungraving - and no wrapping. Hope the GF arrives just in time.