The wife and I were able to spend the better part of an entire weekend using a Glowforge. Here are 2 things that I made. The inlay of the votive design was done by me in illustrator, based on one of my favorite designs. Same goes with the tree design on the iPhone stand.
For the stand design and build - I found some reference inspiration on Pinterest and whipped up some plans in illustrator for the main pieces. My wife is better at 3D thinking than me so she came up with the innards and a key/locking mechanism to hold the cord in place. Overall we probably spent 12 hours: 10-ish designing and maybe 2 printing made up mostly of a few test cuts, and some other work that isn’t pictured here. So much fun was had.
Part of that is a trick of the light. Part of it is an engrave, and part of it is a cut on the top board and not the bottom (it’s 2 stacked pieces of 1/8" walnut). Dan’s right, though. I could’ve just engraved the whole thing and got a similar effect.
This sheds a whole new light on how powerful Proofgrade can be. Instead of worrying about depth my 9 year old daughter can pick how she wants it to look. Absolutely, brilliant.
It’s funny - I guess I’m spoiled. I’ve never made anything with a laser before and never used anything but Proofgrade, so it seems pretty easy. The only learning curve for me was getting used to futzing with paths in Illustrator.