I have a pretty good stock of cardboard, plywood, and MDF. I still plan to do a first run on cardboard until I feel comfortable with my skills on the Glowforge.
I also got my email this afternoon at 1:59. I wish everyone got theirs too and feel kind of guilty, especially with this grin that I can’t seem to shake off my face.
No one should feel bad – we will all get ours in the proper time, and I for one am overjoyed and really excited for those of you that are getting your letters. It is very cool, and it is really fun to see the joy bouncing all over the forum.
Lemme just add that my warning is specifically to tight, high density cutting (ie living hinges). I think cardboard is a fantastic medium. But like anything, you need to know you limits and just pay attention to what happening in you cutter. I use cardboard regularly. i tend to opt out of living hinges and just bend the cardboard.
So without ever having cut cardboard before, I guessed at settings (too lazy to search forums) and used 60%/50 for cut. Came out very nice (this is random parts of a parts box from my E3D printer.
If there is a specific gear set or something you want me to cut as a test let me know. I don’t have a huge stock of cardboard, but I have a bunch of boxes…
I do just about everything in cardboard for a first run. 40/60 on settings for my PRU. First it gives me an idea of any oddball things I missed in prefllght for a file. I can understand @henryhbk needing it less because he does his stuff in OnShape and can see how it all fits together correctly, but me from an Inkscape deisgn have to double check everything for fit. You can also use cardboard for finished product if you skin it with something like kraft paper when you are done. For example, a box that has a couple coats of kraft all round it to make a block. It works well for testing out skeletal models. It makes great stencils. I made the signage for out booth and Maker Faire out of cardboard letters cut out and painted.
The pencil jig works great out of cardboard! I made a quick one today for pencils for @mspricethelibrarian.
No living hinges, no sir. They smolder and catch fire!
For something like that it makes total sense. Since most of my stuff is 3D (tab/slot) it makes less sense
Now for jigs it makes total sense as well since cheap and easy is the name of the game, unless it will be high volume in which case ply seems a better choice since it has less chance of creasing…
Better to waste a step than to waste materials, IMO. I learned that the hard way, by blowing through all of my PG plywood on a box design that I (foolishly) expected to be parametric. It was not
So now I’m hoarding cardboard for prototyping. Similarly, I intend to test some of my more detailed leather patterns using split leather first.
@henryhbk No need to worry about material thickness if you use a parametric design tool like Fusion360. The thickness, say 5mm, isn’t set in the design. You just say every tab / slot / etc to thickness x (or say 10x), and then set x to whatever material you are cutting.