I was thinking last night as I went to put a piece of 3/4 in stock into my Glowforge that it would be great to just put in a tray that was 1/4 inch lower. Either offer them in different sizes, or make an adjustable one.
I am loving the steel bed. I picked up some pretty strong magnets for a project, and have been using them to dewarp plywood.
Secret_Sauce created a great 3D printable file for exactly this. If you do not have 3D printer (as I do not) you can have a local UPS store or other print them for you.
Yeah I like the second part of your idea, a thin adjustable bed.
To put it another way, it would be awesome if GF sold a “thin” crumb tray, say only 1/4" thick, and had spacers that would could stack under it in 1/8" increments. That would allow you to put the spacers (maybe lego-ish feet for the dimples?) under its feet to raise it to your desired height.
Edit: They could also put a small scale and QR on the tray corner, and use that to help us figure out the height.
While these spacers are cool and probably have good uses, this isn’t quite the same thing. If I want to raise up material that isn’t flat and strong, this won’t help me. Likewise if it’s lightweight, similar problem. An adjustable tray would allow us to use magnets to keep things flat and stable.
I saw this yesterday, and almost printed some out. I might still do something like it and put them under the 3/4 MDF sheet I cut this morning to use as a spacer
Yeah that would work I bet, but having a thin honeycomb would have all the advantages that our current tray has: Crumbs falling down, increased airflow, rigidity without as much weight, etc.
I thought about that, but the reality may be that thicker materials won’t cut anyway, so the need for a crumb tray may be reduced.
That’s a fine point… but I already have one use case in mind: cutting holes in the top of a cigar box. The laser would punch through for sure. There are lots of potential solutions, waste boards etc, but I’m just saying that a thin crumb tray would be really nice.
