Jules
June 20, 2018, 3:50pm
16
Chuckle! Don’t let that slow you down, the group multitasks very efficiently. Don’t want to inhibit the crumb tray redesign on your part, but there are tutorials and previously created strategies for dealing with cutting without the crumb tray that might save you some time:
After seeing a couple of people talking about the correct way to do this I made a calculator to simplify the process and hopefully demonstrate the goal.
All you need to do is add the height of your object and the base you want to use and it will tell you if it will work or not and the setting to use in the GF, if it won’t work it will tell you why. If you don’t have a base in mind just put 0 and it will give you the minimum needed.
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Zip file
TrayCalculator3.xlsx (33.8 KB)
Dropbox in…
These were sourced on Amazon: http://a.co/ceqOmch
I specifically went with the 25mm (1 inch) dice for increased visability and “real estate” for engraving. They are cheaper in bulk, but as this was an initial test for a limited run, I thought it was a reasonable deal.
Btw, since these are > 0.5", the crumb tray must be removed, so there’s a bit of math needed to get the engraving face back into the focus zone as well as setting the exact focus distance. It took a few ceramic tiles I had hand…
There’s a great tutorial here on cutting without the crumb tray when you want to work with thicker material. If you want to know the numbers and theory behind it, go read that first, and then come back. Thank you, @henryhbk !
This method uses the digital calipers you should already have, and the not-used-often-enough ZERO button. We’re going to go through the steps from the tutorial above, but without any math or writing down numbers.
The first step is to find the height of your crumb tray’s su…
And some freebies for support in the Free Files section:
Attached is a ‘laser guide’ that helps me align objects for engraving. It’s an approach others have described, and I hope that sharing my example is helpful.
To make the guide, load the attached SVG and configure the outline to ‘cut’. This forum software does odd things to SVGs, but it should still work. It’s 10 in wide x 2 in tall (outside). If your crumb tray is a different height than mine, you might need to scale this slightly.
And a photo of it in action.
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Instructions:
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Glowforgers,
If you are lucky enough to have your Glowforge already, you have probably already run across issues trying to laser objects that are thicker than 0.5"
Removing the crumb tray to fit the work-piece is the easy part.
The hard part is:
Finding something that is the right thickness so that the top surface of your work-piece ends up between the top of where your crumb tray would have been and 0.5" from where the top of your original crumb tray would have been
Calculating the correct…
I liked the material risers @Secret_Sauce posted, but not having a 3d printer and wanting something NOW, I made something similar in medium Draftboard. These risers were just made with a box generator and press-fit together tightly. I will glue them later, but they are going to hold up fine for tomorrow’s project.
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(I made them so the 3 sizes of riser nest together, but it also might be nice if 3-4x of a particular height nested together.)
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The 3 sizes are 2", 2.5", and 3" s…
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