A new Smithsonian article that caught my eye
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That is amazing stuff!
wow, those are insane!! So beautiful, I would never have the patience to hand-cut any of that haha. I wonder how he stacks the layers together?
I can imagine writing software to generate an SVG file that makes a HUGE number of itty-bitty snowflakes, each one unique, all on one sheet. Pop a sheet of paper in the 'Forge and collect the “snow” that falls through the honeycomb. Sprinkle it on a table centerpiece at the next Christmas party. Hand out magnifying glasses to your guests. Marvel.
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This is beautiful, also another possible application of software-generated laser designs… eh? eh? 
The shading in the fractals will be the hard part. It would be wonderful if the grayscale depth mapping feature of the Forge pans out and can give us smooth surfaces like this, instead of stepped contours like the pyramid example @Dan showed us. Not holding my breath though. And certainly not a deal-breaker if it can’t!
But if Dan and team pulls it off, I’ve got some fancy jewelry ready to be 'forged:
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Love the snowflake idea!! And tying in the software-generated design side of things…
intended for 3D prints, but I bet you could fiddle with it to get linework outputs!
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Yup i agree. It was just poor picture choice on my part. A rushed google search for balck and white fractals hehe. I really like the ones you found would be cool if you could cut them large then decrease the size by 1% and do many many layers to give a 3d effect.
Nice find! The only tweak I’d add is logic to prevent overlapping.
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Thanks! If only I had a 3D printer…someday haha. I’m not familiar with OpenSCAD yet, so this could be wrong, but maybe there’s a way of feeding the params a list of differing values and just letting it run through all of them in one go, spitting out a unique snowflake each time 
How about a snowflake generator that exports as svg?
http://paulkaplan.me/SnowflakeGenerator/#
Just drag the dots…
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Another great find! Plus it gives me insight into how to write my gajillions-of-flakes-on-a-page code!
Thanks for that link. Now, just to wait until next Christmas…
whoa- I can already see the hours of entertainment (aka procrastination from work) this will provide. Awesome find, thanks for posting!
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Working with lightweight paper can be very tricky. It would depend on how the blower is situated within the GF… On my Universal lasers, you can install a vacuum table that uses suction to keep the paper in place, otherwise the blower just blows it around… Ive been a bit sucessful using a tacky sheet of cardboard to hold down the paper but the burn on the cardboard transfers to the paper and darkens the edges it too much.
In other forum posts, there’s been discussions of using magnets to hold lightweight material in place.
Since we will be able to precisely place the cuts where we want them, all we’d need would be an open frame shape to stick the paper in and hold it securely.
Maybe something along these lines…
(Heck, we could even cut the frame out of wood with the laser.)
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Strips of magnetic tape seem like a good alternative (though I’d coat mine with something to keep the paper clean).