I used my glowforge to cut out Magic the gathering cards to create a 3D papercraft commander card for my friends anniversary gift. I also used the glowforge to create the foam insert of my puzzle box to hold the card.
A regular person would use an exacto knife to cut out the shapes and be done in an hour but I have permanently shaky hands so that was impossible for me. So I decided to make it as complicated as possible and take days to do it.
I downloaded the image of the card from the internet and traced the parts I wanted to cut out on my ipad with the Sketches app. I then transferred the file to Inkscape and converted it to an SVG file.
I cut out 7 cards to create the image, and an additional 20? 25? cards to create space between the cards to create depth. Glued everything together and protected it with a matte finishing spray.
I covered it with 1/8" clear acrylic I harvested from a magazine holder, also cut on the glowforge.
I didn’t know how it would work cutting something so small so precicely, there were quite a few failures cutting out the cards due to the off set of the camera. It’s pretty accurate but when your looking at cutting out a piece that’s just a few inches a millimeter off and you’ve cut the wrong part of the image. Once I figured out the offset I had precise cuts.
I was really happy with the result and my friends loved it.
Now I know that precise projects that I couldn’t do before are within my reach now. I don’t have to worry about shaking hands anymore, and that feels pretty good.![
Welcome. Congrats on successfully completing such a great gift. The Glowforge will enable you to do so many things that might have been limited by shaking hands.
Wow, that’s gorgeous! and the box is just the cherry on top!
I’m glad my hubby has given up MTG or I wouldn’t be able to show him this
Talking about the offset - have you run your camera calibration? Within 1/4" is on spec for a standard machine, but most folks get to sub 1mm error after running the calibration.
It is worth doing the camera calibration routine - it will tighten up that offset quite a bit.
Also, a jig for this will be your friend - MTG cards are pretty consistent printing - the position on the card does not vary much, so a jig would work most of the time.
I will try that! The camera was very accurate, but at the teeny, tiny artwork would make a 1mm offset the difference between carving the fingers off or not. Although it was off set, it was consistent, so once I figured it out it wasn’t a problem. I hope this hasn’t renewed your husband’s desire to get back into MTG, it’s fun but expensive, lol!