Fun Christmas Ornament Project For Local Organization

We were asked by a local ministry organization (closely affiliated with Wheeler Mission in downtown Indianapolis) to help create special Christmas ornaments to give as “Thank You” gifts this year to those who have help support their ministry.

We created a few mock ups and they selected Medium Maple as the material. Below is a picture of how the project turned out.

I was very happy we had the Pro with passthrough slots for this project as it easily allowed us to maximize the number of ornaments per sheet of material. So quick and easy. I figured we could only get 16 per sheet, but as you can see, we ended up with 23!

We only had two hiccups with the project. The first was my fault when I bumped the head during cleaning halfway through the project and forgot to recalibrate the machine. Halfway through the next cut I realized it was trying to engrave and cut in all of the wrong places. :man_facepalming:

The second is that four of the medium maple sheets we ordered were warping when they arrived. It was enough for concern, but we used some green painters tape to tape each sheet flat in the GF and it all worked out. Going to have to watch that when we order again to replace everything we used for this project.

All said though, a fun project for a good cause! Thanks GF for making these things easy!!

22 Likes

I make it a practice to sight down the edges of the material to determine which way it crowns, and place that down so it’s the edges that are not in contact with the bed and pin the edges down.

Great project - and design!

3 Likes

Nice job on that! I wonder if one of those svg nesting programs would make it possible to eke out another piece or two.

3 Likes

Also, when doing a bunch of patterns, to avoid losing the edges of the material I will divide the file and cut the material strategically to give me all of it.
Below is a picture of a full 12x20 sheet - with patterns all the way to the edge, done in two operations.

If you had the benefit of that left margin you may have been able to get another row in there. In the case it was close, I might elect to slightly reduce the size of the design to maximize yield.

7 Likes

Looks like you got all the goody out of that sheet. :rofl:

5 Likes

Great project! They turned out really nice.