I know just what uke need

Made on a Glowforge
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My older daughter wanted to bring her ukulele to school, but wanted to have a strap to make it easier to carry around. No problem, we have lasers :slight_smile:

We first looked around at different strap designs on pinterest and got a general idea of how they seem to work. We then came up with a simple but clean design that would work with the materials we had available to us. We settled on nylon webbing for the strap itself, leather for the ends and delrin/acetal plastic for the buckle type bits.

Thanks to the Glowforge we can cut multiple materials on the bed at the same time so we did the leather and the delrin/acetal in a single run.

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(for anyone looking for some strong magnets to hold things on the bed, old hard drives provide some good ones ;))

I probably should have cut holes for sewing the leather to make it easier. I was going to use the sewing machine, but it kept getting stuck in the end so we just used the holes from my attempt with a regular needle and thread. They weren’t very pretty though. The buckle rings look like they’ll work well.

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We’ll probably find some leather lace to replace the ribbon, but that’s holding for now.

The button hole I’d made for the base connector was tight to get on (doubled over medium leather), but it rotates fairly freely and feels like it will hold well.

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This combination of goodness made for a happy daughter :slight_smile:

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62 Likes
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Nice! Great Job!

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Your daughter is adorable!

Nice project … think the best projects will be when we do something for our special family/friends. Well thought out … and turned out great.

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Another cool way to save the day! (She looks tickled pink!) :grinning:

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Great project, and translatable to guitar straps as well! Cool idea to make the Delrin buckles.

When I saw the title of this post I thought it was going to be a laser made uke. You should try that next!

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Well done. I can’t imagine sewing that. Cutting holes ahead of time is a good idea.

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Beautiful job!! She looks over the moon happy :grinning:

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Awesome application of the Glowforge and adorable story!

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Uke did it! This is awesome. Great job documenting it - do you mind sharing the settings you used?

My wife sponsors a Hawaiian Club at her High School that she teaches ukulele to, I see a customized set of straps for those kids in my future after she sees this post :wink: BTW - Kala make great ukes!! (we own a few!)

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That’s great! Curious what type of leather you used (weight, tanning, ect),how well it cut, and what settings you used if you’d be willing to share that info? I’m astounded by all the clever uses and projects here.

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my beta unit has wacky settings that don’t really apply to production units. I’ll get the settings for production ones when mine comes though and happy to share that :slight_smile: For the 1/8" delrin you could try 100% power and maybe 200 speed. Might need two passes, but I’m really just guessing since I haven’t had a chance to play with a prod unit and delrin yet.

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