I was asked to engrave the name and date for the ordination of a priest. A colleague of mine who does wood turning (he’s even done the cowboy hat on the lathe. He’s good) asked me to engrave on some pen blanks he turned for a friend of his who is getting ordained. Easy enough project, but given the dimensions of the pen and the roundness of the object, it required some prep.
He gave me three white oak barrel blanks and two olive wood barrel blanks. Should have been enough to get the job done. Well, barely.
First step was just to make a cardboard jig. I had measured one of the white oak blanks and it was within focus length so I was good to go.
I had been used to measuring materials thickness in inches but in this case did millimeters. Whoops. The one blank I had was within focus distance, less thatn a 1/2 inch. So the 3D printed blank I made for extra security for practice was ok for the test. But when I went to do the actual white oak barrels, the first one I picked was thicker than 1/2". Couldn’t understand why the engrave was not crisp. Forgot to take a picture of it before I sent it away. Anyway, it dawned on me that even though the Glowforge was not giving an error for something too thick, it still didn’t focus right with the set focus command. I had measured a barrel and it was ok, but the other four barrels were thicker, over 1/2".
So then I had to switch to making a fixture to put the engrave surface in the focus area.
A little work in Onshape.
Slice in Slic3r
Fixture out of PLA and a top that includes Snapmarks to make alignment easier.
