Pocket Pentominoes

I love it! Very nice job. I always have my damp rag handy but have not needed to use it yet. Make sure you are using a squeegee to press down the masking very well–it seems to help a lot.

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You need to keep an eye on it all the time but I don’t think many laser jobs take many hours.

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Very nice! You need to find something to engrave on the top and make a cover for transport. Maybe wide rubber bands or magnets to keep it closed.

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Unfortunately that is a safety question and Dan will lock down this thread if anybody starts to opinionate beyond “read the manual.”

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all very good safety advice - esp as a noob, I’m going to be extra cautious. Being a bit sloppy with inks and powders just makes a mess. With the laser, sloppiness can lead to fire which can lead to fear, hatred, the dark side… :imp:. thx for your cautions and advice

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I was so excited about there being unread Clark last night that I forgot to comment on the build.
Very nice.

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I’m excited by the thought of making things like this for my kids, instead of paying $20 for it at some fancy toy shop. Nice work!

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Just a quick reminder that came to me reading through this – @dan has asked that we refrain from any safety advice until they are done and get the manual “out on the street”. I’m sure they will let us know from the creators’ standpoint what is safe vs. what might not be. :relaxed:

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Now there is speculation about safety and then there is best practices that can be shared that really shouldn’t bring up any flags. We can be helpful but not authoritative.:try_to_be_helpful_but_not_authoritative:

You need to be around a laser when it is operating. That’s pretty much a first principle in any reading up I have done. I keep a web camera on my bed and if I am at my computer designing things I can always see what’s going on. If I am not at the computer, but am working on assembly or finishing things, I have also a GoPro streaming to an iPad that can babysit long prints, but I stay in the same room.

Not too many jobs take hours, but enough things do get up into the half hour range if you are talking engraving with any detail on a bigger job. Right now I have a two hour print going. It’s making four copies of one item that has engraving and cutting through 1/4" acrylic so it has to make two passes on the cutting. So get used to your new best friend. But it really is amazing how busy you can get, especially in the beginning. The Glowforge tapped creativity and energy that I haven’t had for a while.

But I am open to correction.

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If @marmak3261 using the marmak3261 icon is not meta I don’t know what is. :squee:

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Treat your Glowforge like a gas stove - don’t leave it unattended while it is in operation.

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We love things like pentominoes! I actually just made a pentominoes quilt this weekend

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Nice quilt! But, now I have the Tetris theme song stuck in my head for some reason.

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As soon as she saw the wooden one, my wife immediately said "Nice. That would make a great quilt!"

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Pentominoes are like a tetris cousin! Tetris pieces are made of four adjacent squares - so those shapes are tetrominoes. There are really only 5 tetrominoes if you discount flips and rotations, but tetris includes the flips. These are made of five adjacent squares, hence the name pentominoes. There are 12 pentominoes if you discount flips and rotations - as seen in dwardio’s puzzle and my quilt. You’ll notice my quilt and his puzzle are two different solutions in the same 6x10 grid. Those 12 pentominoes can fit in dwardio’s puzzle in over 2000 solutions! On the smallest scale, dominoes are basically made of two adjacent squares (of course, there’s only one of those shapes, and doesn’t make for a very interesting puzzle, but plenty of other fun games).

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i would totally play pentominoe Tetris… Pentris?

A little variant I found a while back:

Hex FRVR - Hexagon Puzzle Game by FRVR

There have been many versions of it over the years. Here’s one that’s playable in the browser: Pentris

It’s quite a bit more difficult than Tetris because you tend to end up with a lot more unfillable gaps. Thus some versions of Pentris give you other pieces in addition to the pentominoes. This one appears to use all possible pieces of 1-5 squares: Pentris

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Well that was different! I don’t know… Aspects of each were fun, but I think Tetris was in fact correct about the number of blocks.
(Also, the lack of russian techno in both Pentris versions was saddening :cry:)

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Yeah, Tetris is pretty much a perfect balance. The pure Pentris is too annoying to play, but the one with lots of small pieces is far too easy. It would probably be better with only tetrominoes and pentominoes.

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