Ideas

Where do you get your ideas for laser designs and projects? I always got them from my head in the past but I am running out of creative thinking lol. You ever feel like that?

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the world around you. see something cool? make your own variation of it.

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Revisit an old project and remake it? Improve on it and sharpen the skills involved.

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  • Make something you’ve never made before: bird house, cribbage board, cryptex, mechanical iris, 3d puzzle, edge lit or wled project, bathymetric map, layered mandala, polyhedral, dioramma…
  • Support another artist and buy a laser ready design.
  • Start an organization project. ex. drawer separators.
  • Laser on a material you’ve yet to try: paper, silicon, glass, leather, rocks, leafs, eva foam…
  • Collaborate with another glowforger.
  • Make someone a custom gift
  • Learn a new skill: fusion 360, sketchup, 3d slicer…
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Cruise Pinterest or Instagram via search on themes of general interest to you.

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Most of the time for me, it’s “I have x problem. How can I solve it with lasers?”

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I’ve never designed for the sake of it. I use it to create things that come to me, that I am driven to create.

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Everyone goes through a slump, don’t worry about being the world’s most prolific designer. The best books I have read were by authors that got exactly one book published.

For me, like a couple of others have already said, it’s usually about solving a problem.

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ya I’m with you. either I’m solving a problem or it is a gift, or just something fun I thought of. I don’t ever just think “golly what cool thing can I create with BEAMER”

though I probably should. LOL

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Wife, neighbor, friend, or coworker starts a conversation with “hey, can you…?”

Otherwise I just goof around making things I need or like. And I also do tests to try different assembly ideas, etc.

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Every shopping trip ends up with a photo of inspiration, no matter where I go it seems. lol The ideas snowball from there.

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