Jules
February 26, 2017, 3:21am
1
Last Week’s Goodies: Highlights for the Week Ending February 18, 2017
Does the Glowforge have 100% accurate cut-through capabilities on Proofgrade?
Editor’s note: something got lost in translation; this heading doesn’t match the question I thought I was answering. Proofgrade material will cut through every time (or it’s a bug that we need to fix). My reply dealt with the question of “can you precisely engrave to a certain depth.” You can engrave a 1/8" slot much more precisely in, for example, acrylic than it will be in walnut hardwood.
–dan
Sorry for any confusion - the answer here is “it depends on material”. We’ve taken the rather gothic approach of fabricating some of our Proofgrade material from the corpses of once-living plants, which leads to some predictable variations in the resulting product.
Or put another way, the depth accuracy will vary between materials like hardwood (poor) to acrylic (good).
Why is the laser tube mounted on the gantry?
@jamesdhatch - spot on.
Not measurably - @palmercr is right. As long as we don’t exceed certain parameters of force (which requires a bunch of specialized computation, but we do that too) the tube is fine.
Be a little careful about cutting exotic hardwoods.
That’s gorgeous!
One small note of caution: any time you use materials that aren’t designed for a laser, be careful. This board:
[image]
looks to my eye like lacewood, which is an irritant and might not be safe to use in your Glowforge.
How long will shipping to the UK take?
We don’t have transit times available yet I’m afraid.
Is the 10% shipping discount going to be extended?
I think we’ll be doing something here, but I’m not going to make any commitments until we get the bulk of our shipments in customers’ hands.
Man! That’s Sharp!
Since I was able to get some practice in with creating 3d textures via deep etching I decided to try making something more practical with them. I had an old knife that I wanted to dress up a bit. First I took the existing side plates off of it so I could scan them into the PC with my scanner.
[image] I then took the scans into Illustrator and traced the outlines. I used a pair of calipers to measure the sizes of the different mounting holes and placed those over the scan in Illustrator as we…
Gettin Jiggy With It!
(Dan insisted on that title [image]
This jig was relatively straight forward. I’m going to glue these guys together at the corners to form a 90 degree angle, so I didn’t c…
iSense a Disturbance in the Force
Over the weekend I scored an new iPad Mini in trade for some IT work. I didn’t really check what model it was until I got home (Would have done it for free- but they insisted). Then I realized it was better (newer) than the iPad I already had. In which it had a iSense (a rebranded occipital structure) strapped to it. I temp connected the scanner to the newer iPad and immediately noticed the performance difference between the two.
When I got the iSense- I got with the the mount for the iPad I al…
Gettin’ It Ready to Engrave
This tutorial is long overdue, but I promised a few people I would post it, so here goes.
Im doing an engraving ive already done before so you can see some of the different options available when engraving something with a weird shape and an outlined cut. The outline part isnt necessary, but useful in a lot of situations, so this tutorial is a 2-fer.
This is the image we are starting with. Im going to be bringing it into photoshop to clean up, and get some of the initial shapes to move into ve…
Okay, Who Let Her In?
The Glowforge fairy left a deposit on my doorstep yesterday.
It’s a Pre-Release, so I have to give it back one day…but by all that is holy…they might have to physically remove me to get to it. (As in pry me off…crying. Or at least kicking up a hell of a fuss.)
I’m probably supposed to be all cool and adult about this…definitely not my style.
Those of you still hanging around waiting for this thing…
Motion Activated Bike Lights Prototype - Made on a Glowforge
Twin Dragons
It’s Knot What You Think
Had some leftover not too purple purple heart. Decided to see how a Celtic knot would come out:
[image]
So, Day Two, And This Happened
I needed a PDF to test, and didn’t have one worked up, so I grabbed one from our local expert… and the result is totally squeee worthy! @smcgathyfay created this adorable Narwhal phone stand and shared it with everyone earlier last year…I’ve been planning to make one for myself ever since. You can too…I will post the link to her shared file at the end of the post.)
[image]
If you had any idea how excited I’m getting over this thing …
Girl with Gun (This is How it’s Done)
Let’s Fold
Hey folks–I recently watched a PBS special called The Origami Revolution , about the use of origami in science and engineering. It’s a pretty cool show, highly recommended.
Anyway, early in the show was a demonstration by Robert Lang, noted origami expert, where he designed crease patterns on computer then used his laser engraver/cutter to engrave the patterns into his large sheet of folding paper. He was able to get extremely complex models this way.
http://www.langorigami.com/files/resize/a…
Ahhhh-chooooo!
This is a way old thread, but I saw this over the weekend and figured I’d post it.
[image]
It’s a tissue box cover made to look like a mid-century butterfly roofline house. You can’t tell from the pic, but the tissues come out of the chimney. My wife bought this to put in the vacation rental home that we own, which has this same roofline. I tried to convince her that I could DIY this once I get the GF, but she won.
Sanding a Perfect Bevel
Free Online Vector Software
Here is a link to an online, free vector designer software package. Looks interesting and easy to use.
https://gravit.io/
Laser Engraving Comparison on Various Woods
Someone posted this on the laser forums earlier today. It has some rare woods and show how they compare and take darkening from engraving.
[image]
Trader’s Village
sorry, long posting: executive summary = take a look at http://www.levitada.com (read “About”, “How it Works”, “FAQ”)
[image]
details below describe http://www.levitada.com , a tool I made for us to use:
the problem:
We want a way to swap Proofgrade materials once our “thanks for waiting” box of goodies arrives.
Some of us will want a lot of veneer but have no use for leather. Others of us will want a lot of leather but have no use for veneer.
How do we find each other? This forum is great …
Paper Power
I think this might be a tad to advanced and pie in the sky for the ‘project inspiration’ section.
Just a cool video I saw earlier, and look laser cut imo. Paper models that can fold and reconfigure into different shapes. Video sort of speaks for itself.
[Reconfigurable Materials]
Trophies can be Inspiring
Anyone else have kinda weird things they geek-out on? I really admire nice trophies and just spent hours on Pintrest looking at them. (Good gosh, thought sounds kinda pathetic when you say it out loud lol :
Laserable Materials
Fractals Fractals Fractals…
This site has the free pattern for -while not really a jigsaw puzzle toy - but more of a “legoish” style toy. Interlocking pieces for creativity. Using corrugated cardboard looks like a simple but fun project.
[image]
Laser Tips for the Inexperienced
Alright friends, As @Jules suggested, I am going to start a list of useful tips for the inexperienced.
Please add things that might be common knowledge to those who are comfortable with lasers but that might be big news to someone who is new.
We were crediting the folks who generated the tip; but discourse only allows you to mention ten members.
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3rd time in Woot woot(not counting I swear…)! Thanks @Jules for keeping this up another week.
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hansepe
February 26, 2017, 2:35pm
4
All this on top of having a GF too? Thank you
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Don’t have my Glowforge yet but following the forum. Wonder if Mr. Clean Magic Eraser would work?
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I plan to also try a damp melamine sponge. (aka: Magic Eraser) It’s abrasive on a microscopic level. (Excellent for scuffing up the surface on the printer PEI plate to make things stick, without damaging the finish on the bottoms of the prints.)
@Jules , have you checked it out?
This previous thread touched on these and it got some good responses.
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Jules
February 26, 2017, 5:38pm
7
Yeah, I tried a little piece of one the other day. It tends to chew up the sponge pretty badly, which would be pricey if you had to do large areas.
I’ll do a few other tests later.
Yes. It’s got a microporous texture.
It’s good for cleaning sooty residue. You can also wet it so it makes less of a mess on your hands.
Walmart sells a knockoff version for half the price of the Mr. Clean brand and they’re visibly and operationally identical as far as I can tell.
kittski
February 28, 2017, 10:01am
9
If you search for “melamine sponges” you can find them as cheap as $10 for a hundred sponges. I have 200 of them sitting in my garage and I will say that the Magic Erasers are better quality, but for the enormous price difference, I deal with it. (Around 3am I sometimes go into a weird Amazon buying spree; hence the 200 sponges. I tend to not remember everything I buy, but it makes for a nice surprise a few delivery a few days later. For some reason my hubby doesn’t find it as amusing as I do
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Jules
February 28, 2017, 12:47pm
10
Heh-heh! I do the same with the midnight buying jaunts and then can’t remember what the heck l ordered when huge boxes show up!
I bought a couple of large lots of the melamine sponges off EBay a few years ago, and I’ve got a lot left. But these DO crumble a lot worse than the sturdier Magic Erasers.
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PFI-Guy
February 28, 2017, 1:44pm
11
My wife gave me a perplexed look
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)
when I opened a the somewhat medium to large box and handed her the package of 40 magic erasers 