Royal Flush

I’ve been saving this one up since last week, but it’s got me so squeee I can’t stand it any more, so here you go.

I ran across a bag of 1.25" by 0.75" bamboo beads in my stash while I was looking for a snap setter for that leather bracelet, and got bitten by the design bug. (It strikes without warning, and I’m afraid the tutorials and feedback got sidelined for the day.)

I had been working with jigs and placement, and I needed a way to make the beads stay put on the grid. They are tiny, and lightweight, and the air assist blows them right off of the grid when you try to engrave them.

But I didn’t feel like cutting a jig for them, there were slight variations in size that made that impractical.

So how did I keep the little beads from blowing around?

Frog Tape. Doubled up on itself and stuck to the back of the bead. Kept it right where I placed it without shifting or moving at all during the engrave.

I then used only the camera function and my design to align and resize the engraving on the beads.

Frankly, I wasn’t expecting it to work as well as a jig could. But the results were absolutely astonishing to me, and I thought you all might like to see what you can do with this thing, just using the cameras for alignment…

The detail on these things is incredible!

So anyway, I’m fairly chuffed. They turned out a lot better than I expected. :smile:

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Wow, fabulous! Laserize all the thiiiiiiings! Such great detail. :sunglasses: How are some parts a lighter white though?

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Masking still in place? Those look great!

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Oh, hadn’t weeded all the masking off. Just makes it photograph better. (You can’t see the details as well if you remove all of the mask.)

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Ah, you added your own regular white masking tape?

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Ahh, @Jules you’re killing me! Those are great. Quick question, was this a one at a time engrave, or did you put all of them on the grate and then align different layers to different beads? Just curious.

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Oh yeah, I re-used some paper masking from another project that hadn’t been lasered yet. (recycled)

One at a time, because I only designed them one at a time. Did the Jack first, liked it, and went after the other cards. :grin:

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Do you have a full “deck” of 52? Or just one run of the 13 cards of Spades?

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Chuckle! Just the 5 cards shown - it takes a while to design the engraving.

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I am speechless…

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Oh @jules, I love, love, love this! :squeeee::squeeee::squeeee:! Now I wanna go look for some bamboo beads.

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Holy henna, that’s fantastic! I love the engraving!

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Love Love Love!!!

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These are amazing.

I’m getting a strong urge to drive over to Michaels and wander around looking for potentially laserable items. :slight_smile:

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If you’re not into cards, you could also do mahjong tiles, or arcane symbols for some of the games that folks play. (I’m not a gamer, so I don’t know what’s in right now.)

Michael’s or Hobby Lobby is a great place to find stuff. I was thinking about doing a clock blank or two. They sell the wood and the clock mechanisms. (I just need to find time for a run…it’s never a quick trip in there.)

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That made me smile.
Thank you

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perfect – my sister-in-law has her weekly mahjong group that she started – what a cool idea…

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Those beads probably don’t wanna stand up on end, huh? 'Cause… dominoes.

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Those look amazing! Great job!

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Yeah, these actually do…great suggestion! A little traveling dominoes set. :grin:

(Forgot to mention I was engraving on a slightly curved surface with these…worked without a hitch, but I don’t know if it’s enough of a curve to affect anything.)

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