Last Week’s Highlights
Would it be unwise to leave the Glowforge unattended while printing?
Treat your Glowforge like a gas stove - don’t leave it unattended while it is in operation.
Geekwire Interview - Dan Shapiro - May 2nd
There's a lot of new people moving to Seattle — and we mean a LOT. That huge shift is creating tension between newcomers and old timers, and it's why two
Est. reading time: 4 minutes
Making a Mobile for Baby Scarlett
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Passes at Glass
A couple of firsts today… First attempt to engrave glass and first job without the crumb tray.
The test article is a $2 glass bottle from Hobby Lobby. After measuring it, I propped it up on a piece of cardboard to get into focus range, and took a complete swag at the settings…
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One side I coated with a bit of dish soap, the other I left unprotected. Can’t really tell the difference.
These were svg vector engraves. Next attempt will be raster engraves with 4 “colors.”
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Marble
Jimi looks good anywhere.
A metamorphosed limestone, I expect any calcium carbonate would react the same. Instead of micro-fracturing the surface like granite, marble is ablated.
Like @marmak3261 observed with Corian, I noticed tiny sparks - which turned out to be a very fine hot ash.
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By the feel of my fingernail I would guess about a 100th" depth. The surface is bleached of all pigment and will receive color well. In this case trusty Krylon flat black spray.
What else do I have ar…
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Button Escutcheon - Stargate
Escutcheon SG-1
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I’m loving the Proofgrade walnut!
Ravioli Pin
The ravioli rolling pins look good and helpful and I like the demo video at the top showing how one would work. Using Proofgrade 1/8" acrylic might do a good job for the slicers. Easy enough to put together over a broomstick. or thick dowel.
@mpipes looks promising but if you go ahead and make the lengthwise cutters as deep as the thickness of the round cutters and put them on the inside, when you slip it over the center dowel, everything will hold together without glue because the dowel will b…
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Glowforge Sizing Gauge
Whether I’m at a big-box store, a craft store, or even the local ReSource shop, I often ask myself “Will that fit in my Glowforge?” Usually, I’ve forgotten my tape measure and as cute as they are, I don’t typically carry a Founder’s Ruler with me.
I wanted something I could keep on a keychain or attach to my backpack, so came up with this.
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The long axis represents the current maximum depth an object can have if you remove the crumb tray (1.5 inches thick + 0.5 inch for the current m…
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Snake Eyes
https://community.glowforge.com/uploads/short-url/hcbzQVCBu0wqiLeUrcve6OmxI7H.jpg
April Showers
Our latest showers had us looking to make some flowers. My older daughter decided she wanted to make some paper flowers so she took to the web looking for how to make them. She found a few designs she liked and drew them up in Illustrator. The first one was a sort of folded spiral card design. The basic design was simple enough.
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It took us a few minutes to figure out the folding of it.
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She added a bit of coloring and also tried a slightly larger version to take to school…
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Project’s Done
I finally got the rest of my sorting trays done, and now I have a complete sorting system!
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Last night I played in the pre-release for the latest Magic the Gathering set, Amonkhet! If I’m building a deck (as I did last night), then I would sort by casting cost!
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As a result of playing the tournament, I won some packs! Those combined with the packs I got in the pre-release pack means I have a lot to sort. To start, I sort by color!
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Then, I would take each color and …
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Ravioli Roller
First and foremost, thanks to @iliketomakestuff for the inspiration!
I decided to make my own, all laser cut of course! No glue, all press-fit, made out of 1/8" maple. I decided to use two layers of wood for all segments and used that fact to add a crimping element, to better seal the pasta!
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(I broke some of the points off as I was pressing everything together)
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And then it just so happened that a friend brought over some pasta, specifically to make ravioli!
[…
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Copics Organizer - FoamCore
Here’s an item I actually made by hand with ruler and craft knife before I got my GF pre-release, and decided to do another in Fome-Cor (paper-backed foam board) before possibly doing it in acrylic. The idea is to have a place to keep my Copic markers on a shelf at eye level so I can just grab the one I want quickly. There is a slight tilt to each shelf so the markers will stay in place. (Note: this design is not unique–I’ve seen similar ones in Pinterest, but I did do the Illustrator work o…
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Pappy Cubed
OK, so @cynd11 your wish is my command. I got some papyrus (god I love the internet) and attempted the papyrus squared challenge. The 1%/350 is still too hot, but maybe with the next lower-low settings we can truly engrave it…
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Test Engraves
Just finishing up a couple of test engraves on non-Proofgrade birch ply. The top image (John Snow’s Cholera map) is straight from the web and the Star Wars concept art is from a photo I took at the Denver Art Museum last year.
[Engraving images on a Glowforge]
Here are final results after removing the masking. The concept art has a really nice 3D effect that doesn’t quite come through in this image, btw.
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NB: the scorch marks are from a prior project – I just used a pie…
Joyce Kilmer
“I think I have never seen a 'forge as lovely as a tree…”
Okay, maybe that’s not how the poem goes. Been a long time since I sat in Mr Klinger’s American Lit class.
My daughter is wrapping up her first year at Elon University in Elon NC. A prominent feature of the campus and integral part of the school’s culture is the oak tree. Every student is given an acorn upon entry and an oak seedling when they graduate. Lot of symbology and history surrounding the trees in town and around campus.
She’s…
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Battery Storage Boxes - Cityscape
Okay, finally carved this baby down to a manageable size.
(And since the various Proofgrades that we have to work with are different thicknesses, it took a couple of iterations to pull off the effect I wanted.)
I did away with the fancy insides and went with a straight lift the lid off and drop the batteries in…it uses less wood, and takes less time to load. (It’s also a lot easier to build.)
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I think it turned out looking a little bit like a building, so the continuation of the bat…
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Camping on the Roof
Have never seen a slate tile roof in WV but somehow I ended up with a box full. Of course everything looks like a blank slate when you have a laser. Grabbed a broken tile for this test. Uploaded a simple drawing of my Xterra SUV and attached tent. Pressed Print. Slate does not accept shading very well and you should to be aware that the image will appear as a negative, but it works great for line drawings.
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Necklace Pendants
Hi Everyone!
It was a super dreary weekend where we live, and because of that we ended up spending a good majority of the time indoors. So, in between episodes of “The Wire”, I decided to make a few necklace pendants.
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Since the cuts were close together, I changed the cutting settings to manual, and reduced the laser power by 5 percent and upped the speed by 5 lines per minute.
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Two were made with 1/8" cherry hardwood, and two were made with 1/8" walnut hardwood.
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Lasering Your Colon
So one of my colleagues who I do most of my research with is a color-rectal surgeon. He collects “unique” colon gifts, so figured since I hadn’t lasered anything for him, it was a good morning project.
First off I have a very nice 3D model of the colon that you guys have seen in my molding thread but figured it was time to laser that…
So I took it into Slicer for Fusion, now to do that I took the OBJ file into MeshLab and first decimated the model from 1m polygons, to 15000 (since this will be…
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Tie Fighter Ornaments
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Stop Grinding My Gears
So tonight had to work on 2 prototypes for a set of “what really grinds my gears ” problems in the OR (crap falls on the floor, and somehow in the last 2500 years of surgery we haven’t figured out a good way to have crap not fall on the floor - especially if it is hooked to a tube/wire)
So first problem was with the device called the “Bovie” named after Dr. William Bovie (it’s also known as the Electrocautery) which is a RF arc knife/cautery that can either cut/cauterize or just cauterize. They …
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Second Gear Degrinding
So the second removal of things that annoy us in the OR and pull stuff to the floor, is tube and hose management. Not rocket science, but after trying a bazillion devices out there, we decided to make our own (this is part of the project that the bovie holster I am working on belongs to) and so the idea is to be able to hold up to 3 suction lines and 3 bovie cables and maybe another “thing” that needs to run up or down the table.
Depending on which OR we are in the suction tubing might run from…
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Acrylic Tests
Just spending a little time doing some testing on the 1/4" acrylic that I finally was able to break into usable size for the Glowforge. In the photo, ignore that deep score across the top on the back sides of the test pieces, that was just one of my unsuccessful scoring attempts, not the laser.
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Anyway, besides the fact that engraving on acrylic is really awesome, I thought folks might be interested in a different material for color infill. What I’m using is different colors of patin…
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Dark Shadows
OK, not to build it up too much, lol…
Now, this pic doesn’t really do it justice; the light I was using isn’t that bright, and it’s a bit blurry. It looks so much better in real life, but at least it gives an idea…
Shine a bright light on the face of it…and display the shadow onto a wall::
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Look at that face! Sorcery!
Plus, check out the pretty border, created by the flashback from the crumb tray. Again, it’s blurry here, but it looks really nice in real life…
Sooo, think of the…
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Leather Adventures
Since getting a PRU, I’ve mentioned more than once that I’m experiencing a bit of a learning curve. For one thing, I’ve never used a laser before - and while this forum has taught me an awful lot about that, I still have a lot more to learn. Another factor is my lack of experience with design software. I often use Photoshop to edit product photos, and I’ve used Corel and Powerpoint in the (very distant) past to create beadwork tutorials - but I don’t have a strong background with graphic design …
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Sewing Basket
I got started on a build for that Grid Purse that I posted a while back, and adjusted for the actual thickness of the material.
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But it was also a test of the results of the Slicer program for Fusion 360, and I’m sorry to say, I don’t believe it did what I think it should have done.
The program placed a couple of unnecessary cutouts where they weren’t required (due to the smaller size of the actual material being used), and they make for a much more difficult assembly and a weak spot …
https://community.glowforge.com/uploads/short-url/fFaSYHc8rYLixcsFabsdqX9wrs8.jpg
Creating Geometric Patterns https://community.glowforge.com/t/having-some-fun-with-geometric-patterns/7286?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/5/e/5e843c2375dd6bf3f3906de4e1081f4d510c8742_1_690x388.jpg
An Unkerfed Clef https://community.glowforge.com/t/perfect-fit-inlay/7315?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/8/6/8667a17c01f1cc0d3ba1acfa897e3585fd137735_1_332x500.JPG
Autoharp Dressup https://community.glowforge.com/t/pre-release-autoharp-dressup/7318?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/8/9/892b6d3ceada470b9f9181f63ed9931741f67409_1_690x277.jpg
Cutting Thin Fabrics for Applique Work https://community.glowforge.com/t/cutting-thin-fabrics-for-applique-work/7320?u=jules https://community.glowforge.com/uploads/short-url/AmTNr36Ke0XcHhmpWFGPtsqwWy0.JPG
Feliz de Laser https://community.glowforge.com/t/feliz-de-laser/7321?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/4/b/4b00cadd72a87e195382b5399005143ab86e5bdd_1_666x500.jpg
Purple Heart Inlay https://community.glowforge.com/t/purple-heart/7322?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/0/6/06034bd8c309d6f8a7a67fe3d38943f3052e4cd8_1_666x500.jpg
Eat More Chikun https://community.glowforge.com/t/dispatches-from-the-front-pre-release-report-the-eat-more-chicken-edition/7324?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/6/7/670567290f00e0a782ad2f2bed6d0b6824eedcce_1_666x500.jpg
Aztec Escutcheon https://community.glowforge.com/t/dispatches-from-the-front-pre-release-report-aztec-edition/7323?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/2/f/2f24007750a9f9ede341d03eb8c8ef987215c89c_1_375x500.jpg
Movin’ on Up https://community.glowforge.com/t/movin-on-up/7325?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/1/3/13bf6c779d4b9344dc976c9de1560c7336430dee_1_690x388.jpg
Mitral Valve Leaflets https://community.glowforge.com/t/space-invaders-or-mitral-valve-leaflets-you-decide/7331?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/e/7/e7e4873daf3df99311c62280fb2745c6ca9f853d_1_666x500.jpg
Celtic Cross https://community.glowforge.com/t/celtic-crosses-and-votive-stands-in-1-4-clear-acrylic/7340?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/8/2/82df38fd38c2e0157f199974e7cd6409ec9f6f43_1_666x500.JPG
Another Glowforge Meetup https://community.glowforge.com/t/colo-glowers-meetup-with-dwardio/7410?u=jules /uploads/db6859/optimized/3X/d/e/ded7a317cd9caad8edc230dcaf2e7614f00d4786_1_690x388.jpg
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https://community.glowforge.com/t/mac-command-key-coasters/7247?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/octagonal-horn/7238?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/show-and-tell/1731/1736?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/onshape-lasercutting-workflow/7251?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/leatherworkers-can-i-engrave-then-tool/5961/27?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/pocket-pentominoes/7212/23?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/show-and-tell/1731/1753?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/awesome-cardboard-art/5621/14?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/more-body-parts/7272?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/sacred-geometry/7275?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/make-magazine-article-on-laser-cut-engraved-leather-stamp/7285?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/about-the-project-inspiration-category/12/9?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/how-to-fail-at-laser-cutting/2317?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/waste-not-want-not/7127/52?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/diy-arcade-cabinet-kids-and-more/7307?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/science-friday-never-ending-bloom/7309?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/stargate-escutcheon-for-the-glowforge-print-button/7310?u=jules
https://community.glowforge.com/t/design-challenge-kayak-marquetry/3234/65?u=jules
