Last Week’s Highlights
Nuttin new under the sun.
Happy Easter!
Happy Easter everyone! I decided to make a quick Easter basket addition as a surprise for my husband.
(he is the usual blogger on here, so please forgive the lousy pictures).
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The bunny is made from Cherry proofgrade, and took about 8 minutes to cut and etch.
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I used hot glue, to give enough dimension to the piece so that a gift card would fit between the big feet and head.
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The final product! I’m really pleased with out it turned out, and the gift card fit perfe…
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Flight of the Phoenix
That movie was just playing on cable…excellent film. (Both versions.)
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Design Shop Puzzles
Recently made these 2 puzzles with the new beta unit I now have. [image]
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[im…
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Yes, They Do Keep Their Coffee on Tap at GF HQ!
We have a dry office, but we still have a keg. [image]
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Coin of the Realm
The coin of my realm…it is the way of my people. PG maple ply, engraved both sides, gold embossing powder. Filling up unused spaces on my material. Sorry…should have given a reference…slightly larger than a quarter.
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Team Coasters
I showed a good friend and neighbor the Glowforge, and he asked if it could do his favorite teams logos on coasters.
While you wait.
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The spokes on the Bruin’s logo were yellow and engraved at a different power by default.
Edit; with a PNG file.
Nothing but awesome from this machine.
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Laser Tile
Last week I did some work on glass tiles from Home Depot. This weekend I want to show what a specialty laser tile looks like from the Glowforge.
LaserTile is a specially treated ceramic tile. It comes in different sizes and is available here http://lasertile.com/
The glaze reacts to laser light and turns a fuses black. It’s a lot like what happens with laser printers. It won’t scratch off and it doesn’t actually etch the surface like I did with the glass tiles.
So I pulled out a tile, dropped…
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Easter Edition
Time for a gratuitous Easter Bunny project [image]
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Cut Calibrations
So one of the first things I usually do on a laser is to run calibration projects on them. But the Glowforge is a bit different from what I’m used to with Proofgrade materials and auto-magic settings for cuts, engraves and scores. When I got the PRU I followed the directions in the user manual (figured I should since it would be embarrassing if I broke someone else’s machine or reported a “problem” only to get a “we mention that on page 7 of the user manual” response to a support request …
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Cutting Felt
I’m making a living hinge glasses case using Proofgrade maple plywood. It will be lined with felt to keep from scratching the eyeglasses.
Easy cutting the PG, but what settings do I use on felt? I’m using a self-adhesive craft felt from Michael’s. The stuff is 0.075" thick with a peel off liner on the back.
Into the 'forge, load up my cut line test file and start testing. My cut line test file is simply a set of 2 lines, one vertical and one horizontal. If I want to cut a piece off material I …
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A Spirited Debate
Finally had a chance to try out the Proofgrade Walnut hardwood with another ongoing project [image]
For comparison, here’s the same file in Maple…
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BTW, the original design was done in Affinity Design (including an imported bitmap) and exported as an SVG. Like Illustrator, AD also provides an export option that automagically converts text to curves — very handy!
Cheers!…
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To the Point
The Wallhouse
My younger daughter has a few sets of Sylvanian Family dolls that she loves, but they’re often sitting idle in a box buried in her closet. We first found a cute fairy dollhouse design on the web
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which we played around with using corrugated cardboard. I had to break it down into 10 or so print files to get it all done, but it came out pretty decently.
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This still took some space though whether it was on the floor or her desk. It was a bit too tall for her shelves at around …
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DIY Erector Set
So, making boxes and such is going to leave us with a lot of smallish pieces of PG and this stuff is relatively precious so I’d like to not be throwing a bunch of it away.
Not to fear, there are a lot of smallish things to make with it. But what to do when you’ve got rulers everywhere and all your luggage is tagged?
Well, creative toys of course as you can’t have too many. Boxes full are not too much. Good for five YO through EOL.
Here’s my first, I’m sure there will be many more. This one ne…
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Cut Corian Cookie Stamp
One of my friends recently brought over his switch and let me play a bit of the new Zelda. So to celebrate I decided to make some cookies. I figured I’d try and do something more than just regular cookies so I decided it was time to try using some 1/2" Corian material I had available to me. I picked out a nice triforce pattern and vectorized it into something I could work more easily with. I did a nice slow and deep engrave into it and then did a multi-pass cut which I was happy to see worke…
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Small Stuff
Scanning through all of the great “Made on a Glowforge” projects this morning. Felt a little lame for not posting any of my recent projects. So, leaned over as far away as the coffee table grabbed a little something and pressed print. Spent more time checking how to correctly spell Pistachio.
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Proofgrade Acrylic Slump Bowls
Continuing the discussion from Adventures in Acrylic :
@Jules was kind enough to let me post these bowls of her design and inspiration first. I got a request for these bowls from my wonderful art and environment chair. The request was accompanied by a Wagner heat gun. And she did a fantastic job decorating the church for the season. So I obliged.
This is very simply. Put the design in the GFUI. Size it as big or small as you want. Press print. It works flawlessly in both 1/8" and 1/4" acrylic. …
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I made a Thing on the Glowforge
More Acrylic Cookie Cutters
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I made two more cookie cutters. The hedgie and the Millenium Falcon. The cookies didn’t turn out though because I used a roll of dough from the store that puffed up and spread out. Need to mix up another batch of AB’s sugar cookies. They worked great.
The hedgie works perfectly. I do have to tweak the design a little. Messed up the slot size for the handle.
The Millenium Falcon worked great as an outline. The engraved detail showed up, but in this dough dissappea…
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Cosplay Gun
I know I’ve been quite for a bit but life has been quite busy. My daughter and I go to an anime convention every year and we both cosplay. This year I decided to cosplay “Stun Gun” Millie Thompson from Trigun. I tend to pick my cosplays by their props and this was no exception. Her multi-barrel non-lethal gun was a lot of fun to build and got a lot of remarks at the con itself. 90% of this build was made from plywood cut with the Glowforge.
First test fit of the main body pieces. I didn’t real…
Engraving Cabochons
Here are my initial attempts with the cabs. Clearly, my approach needs some fine tuning, but I learned a few things along the way and that much is good:
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Placement shows the order of attempt, from left to right, top to bottom. The first row was done with a wet towel, and I found design placement very challenging with that method. I also realized quickly that finer lines seem to work better, so I switched up the clip art.
In row 2 I started using the dish liquid, which worked very nice…
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Scoring Stained Glass
Continuing the discussion from Ideas for stained "glass" windows :
Okay, I did a little test today, in between working on a different project. Just to see if scoring stained glass for cutting is a possibility. I used some relatively smooth (i.e., easy to cut) yellow translucent glass and cut a flower petal design that was part of a design I previously cut for a mosaic brick.
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For settings I used Cut, 100% power, 60 speed, focus height 0.116"
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It definitely chowdered up the …
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Skin your iPhone with some Proofgrade Veneer
So…did you guys know that you can skin your iPhone case with the Proofgrade veneers?
(Yeah, me either, until a couple days ago.) @shell , I would love to see your cool coffee bean pattern adapted for this and included in the catalog, along with a few other “profession” related themes like engineering, or maybe some gears, or a musical theme…I think they’d be popular. I’m first in line for the coffee bean one.
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Summer’s Coming - Sunglasses Case
One of the things that lasers do really well is make very thin cuts in things. That makes something called a “living hinge” practical for all sorts of projects. Living hinges allow materials that don’t usually bend, curve or fold easily. One of the things that most amazes non-laser people is seeing things bending that ought not to. Putting those together is a marriage made in heaven and gives you a little extra “Wow!” to help explain why the wait for your Glowforge was worth it.
Since the winte…
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Bwente’s Tangram
Had a go at @bwente ’s Tangram design using the files uploaded by @marmak3261 , out of 1/8" birch ply I picked up at Woodcraft last week. Since it is unfinished, I used TransferRite Ultra 582U as masking. I’m pretty happy…
Here kitty, kitty…
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I really need to make a photo booth…
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I took this photo so I’d remember how to put it back together… [image]
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Escher Fish Puzzle
@m_raynsford ’s Escher fish. I took the design and broke it apart to have individual fish to place in scraps. There are three fish designs to complete the tiling. Proofgrade walnut ply.
It really becomes a cool puzzle.
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More Escher Fish
Great minds and all that… I’ve been cutting Escher fish out of wood scraps an giving then a bit of color with Touch up pens
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Seems to be the laser equivalent of the Sharkz I print in every coil of filament I run through my 3D printer.
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A Pencil - Pfft
So @Jules , tag - you’re it…
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Need to work on the engraving power, because custom bamboo skewers at a BBQ says awesome!
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Game On!
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Will it Forge? (Biblical Question)
So talmudic scholars have debated long into the night, whether the israelites fleeing egypt didn’t let their bread rise as they didn’t have enough time, or they realized leavened bread wouldn’t fit under the head of their GlowForges…
Well here we go:
drop the mic (Yes, that’s a grain of rice.)
Challenge accepted, and…Boom. [image]
Yes folks…that’s a grain of rice. @dan , @tony , @mark and all of the Glowforge crew…my socks have been blown OFF!
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PeepForge!
All right @Jules , ask and ye shall receive… By the way, I think the guy at the store called the TSA on me, when I ran in and said “I need Peeps and a bottle of mustard seeds…”
(not sure why it is rotated?)
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That was 1%/250
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Glowforge Visit
@joe came over for a PRU visit since he lives nearby. Amusingly we met in line at the GlowForge booth at MakerFaire NYC and found out we live near each other.
Note: I am not wearing a Viking hat, but my son took the picture with the cow skull (long story) right behind me.
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Colonel Mustard, in the Library, with a Laser
Remember Clue? Pretty sure my wife thinks I need to get one,
@Jules , challenge answered:
In case folks were wondering how many letters fit on a mustard seed? It is one… And attempting to optically align that H onto a mustard seed was soooooo painful… (you can see a near miss on the tape from a corner of the mustard seed)
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Edge Lit Sign
So never done an edge lit sign, and wanted to see how it worked. So got the logo to my Wife’s hospital online (actually only had a low res png which I auto traced in AI). I kind of wanted an animal on the sign, one of those cool wireframe ones, but I’m way to tired to make one in one of my 3D programs, so got the Autodesk 123d demo dog and just took a screenshot of the mesh in MeshMixer. Then traced that in Photoshop using a color range selection which I converted to a work path and then exporte…
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Twenty Nothing
My Son is about to turn 30 - [image]
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So easy to whip out a personalized occasion specific doodad. No more joining the herd in the greeting card isle at the grocery store on holida…
Pocket Pentominoes
Ever since reading Clarke’s Imperial Earth when in school, I’ve been fascinated with Pentominoes . After printing the Tangram earlier this week, I wanted to see if I could make a small “travel-sized” Pentominoes set.
I created the pattern from scratch in Illustrator, but it would have been just as easy in AD or even Inkscape. I have a few tweaks and instructions I want to add to the file, but intent to posting it to the “Free Laser Patterns” area soon.
In the meantime, here it is rendered out…
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Pocket Pies/Branded Ravioli Pin
Weck Jar Lids
Something simple.
I love the shape of Weck jars and think they make great gift containers for food and small items, but the lids could stand some pizazz if you’re going to gift them. [image]
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I just went and scrounged up some internet images for these…(I think the fish would make a fantastic gift filled with hand-tied flies or specialty lures for a fisherman.)
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Engraved cherry Proofgrade ply.
I am so incredibly impressed with the phenomenal amount of…
Puzzles
OK. This is almost acceptable. Probably would benefit further with a few process changes. I used one of my wife’s drawings that was inkjet printed on glossy photo paper. Used spray contact adhesive to put it on MDF. Sprayed Polyurethane over the photo to protect the print. After the poly dried I put masking material over the photo. (The poly keeps the masking from pulling the ink off the paper when you are peeling it) Placed the photo in the laser face down and cut the puzzle piec…
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Bananaramma
Friday night and the wife is out helping at a school fundraiser. Kids are all grown or in college. Dog is asleep.
What to do?
Let’s see, there’s some ice cream in the freezer. Some whipped cream in the fridge and this!
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Hmmm…banana instigating wanton consumption of empty calories?
Peel it back and what do we have?
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Well this has fate written all over it (metaphorically speaking as it’s clearly Glowforge Food!). Grab a couple of pints of ice cream, the aforementioned whipp…
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Inventables Laser Safe Linoleum
So when @Joe came over the other night, he left me some of the Inventibles Linoleum (laser safe) stamp blocks (2x3). He can explain more, but he had an intricate pattern that he and his friends wanted to engrave on the stamp for making play money for LARP. Since this was an unknown quantity I figured I’d have to figure out some things.
First off they are too thick to fit on the bed, as each block is almost 0.8" (~20mm) as they have a particle board backing. So had to remove the crumb tray. Befo…
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Plywood Display Shelves
@MiniMouse contacted me a few weeks ago requesting some aid in redoing some shelving for the display of her beautiful miniatures. The shelves she has are fine, but the side brackets are cut so that the shelves aren’t flat but dip down toward the back. The miniatures tend to slide to that back with the existing design.
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I thought this would be a nice project to work on. Since the design is pretty simple and uses standard 6mm /.23" 5 ply craft plywood, I could make matching side supports…
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Walnut Veneer Engraves
So first off, @Jules is like my Ygrette - “You know nothing @henryhbk ”. So to start out with I realize daily that I know nothing about AI, since before having a laser, I would use it once in a very long while to fix something for a poster or something; and of course @jules is amazing; so when I comically discolored and burned (engraving and cutting wouldn’t really apply to that hot mess) some walnut veneer, I figured I needed some help.
So after learning how to properly trace and then fix-the-t…
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Geek Cred
I had a friend that is 30 years my junior drop by today and as we always do, we geeked out.
He had to see the Glowforge in action so we started printing and 4 hours later…
I made him a hero to his kids which kinda makes me a hero as well.
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Besides these, I sent him home with a box full of my desk toys for “beta testing” by older kids. I doubt they will get near them as David seemed quite enamored with them.
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Just saw this pop up on FB:
Looks like a standard acrylic laser etching, and led light. But the heat bend, and manner it is used is awesome.
I still haven’t figured out the difference of cell vs extruded acrylic. Would that make a difference in this case?
Link to Etsy shop of make:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/MardeFe?ref=l2-shopheader-name
Kicking around a design idea today. I haven’t fleshed out the details of how the sun rays will interlock with the main circular part yet but I’m thinking square holes in both the top and bottom discs/rings and matching tabs at the top and bottom edges of the rays.
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https://community.glowforge.com/t/laser-cut-dovetails-youtube-video/2757/44?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/acrylic-color-fill-with-acrylic/7161?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/contraptions-with-facial-elements/7182?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/d-d-relief-map/7200?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/forfalska/7216?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/ninja-forge/7220?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/powerpoint-vector-graphics/7221?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/tab-box-generator/7222?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/lovely-inlay-boxes/7234?u=jules
