Jules
February 5, 2017, 2:00pm
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Last Week’s Highlights: Highlights for the Week Ending January 28th, 2017
Are buyer benefits transferable if I sell my machine?
We haven’t decided that yet, so best to assume no.
Does the machine design take wire fatigue from repeated flexion into account?
Indeed - this was designed in from the start.
What causes blackening inside the engraved area and how do I clean it off?
The darkening is mostly re-deposited vaporized material like sap from the wood that re-settles. The protective coating that we use on Proofgrade materials intercepts this to keep the surface clean. To clean in the crevices, you can use orange cleaner as mentioned above (and shown here ), re-engrave as Rebecca discovered, or other cleaning-type procedures like washing or sanding.
–dan
Is the variable depth engraving an automated process for Proofgrade materials?
You’ll be able to do 3D engraves in manual mode. (That’s the only way we do them right now!)
Will we someday cook up some clever material-specific tweak that’s encoded into Proofgrade settings but not exposed in manual mode? I have no idea, but I don’t expect so.
On status updates: Are you going to tell us how many units will be shipped out each month?
Working on an update. We won’t be providing month-by-month shipment information; as I’ve mentioned earlier, that’s just too helpful for people who should be doing their own homework and not peeking at ours.
Storming the Castle
My older daughter came home Tuesday saying she had an extra credit project she wanted to do for school. She wanted to make a Japanese castle model for what I assume must be history class. The trick is it was supposed to be due Friday. Well, challenge accepted! We surfed around the web for some pictures and looked through some books to come up with ideas and eventually settled on Mastumoto castle as the inspiration source since it looked a bit simpler than many of the others we’d seen and the…
A Tisket, a Tasket, a Gradient Engraved Basket
Sarbarmultimedia and @m_raynsford have some interesting tests at variable depth engraving. I won’t call it 3D because these are far from finished examples of what will be possible with 3D engraving enabled.
I’m curious, especially with @takitus chipping away at this feature on the Glowforge. I thought I would see how gradients in Inkscape worked, exported as a PNG with no processing. Just brought in to the UI, rescaled smaller and printed.
<img src=“//cdck-file-uploads-global.s3.dualstack.us…
Lord of the Things
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The Lord of the Rings is my favorite book, period. I read it every summer from the age of 10 to 26 and then a couple times since. I did like the Peter Jackson movies because they got the feel and images right, even though there were some major departures. The scene before the troop heads into the mountain is one of my favorites. The pacing of the story is amazing and the details are so powerful. Of course the humor of the trying to open the door is a perfect setup for the drama after. …
Another Bright Idea
This project started out as an outdoor rustic chandelier that would have hung over our non existent outdoor dining table … as planned it would have been 3 tiers of slats attached to a tomato cage. To say the idea got lost in translation would be an understatement but in the end … I have a repurposed lamp with a really cool lamp shade!
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BEFORE…
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AFTER…
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Armed with a can of spray paint and a Glowforge I can change the world!
DIY Two Tone Acrylic Fish
I made this necklace charm for my daughter. The design is an inside joke. The reasoning I am sharing is the two tone finish. I engraved the face and then painted it before I removed the protective paper. I have to say for a first time doing that I am quite happy with the results. [image]
Dice Tower V2
A friend at work said “If you really like me you’ll make me a dice tower!”
I’ve been toying around with a dice tower design anyway, so I figured why the heck not. Version 1 was pretty bad. I tried to make it two pieces so it could fold up… My design was pretty bad, and too big, so I moved on to version 2. I’m still not 100% happy with it, so more designs will come… but here’s what I have so far!
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Angels Among Us
Posting this to document a few things regarding design, materials and workflow.
My materials picker (a parishioner who drops by the office just about every day with some materials or ideas for the Glowforge) came up with some on-sale nightlights at Menards. $10 for three, reduced to $8 and then add a 10% discount if put in the big shopping bag.
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Although it is tempting to throw the reflector shield in the Glowforge, I would guess this is polycarbonate and not acrylic. Not wanting to m…
You Spin Me Round
This is filed in the ‘Huh, I didn’t think that was going to work’ category.
I wanted to try my hand in thermoforming. The idea was to cut out a pattern or a raster and ‘soften’ the acrylic around a form to create a bracelet for my wife with the following items.
A Powder coat oven.
A Bowl.
A (Empty) Beer bottle.
A Glowforge.
As always this adventure starts out in Fusion 360 and a Woodchuck (Beer). I made a couple repeating patterns then cut them out. Since the end result was basically was g…
Missing Missiles Manufactured!
So, I had my old Battlestar Galactica Viper, but had lost the choking hazard/missile many moons ago. I’d played with the idea of 3d printing some, but realized as I was making the wooden one that I could just cut the profile of one out of 1/8" acrylic and it would probably work. So, I grabbed a pair of calipers and measured some of the slots on the toy and guessed at some of the internal measurements, then looked at some pictures of the original ones on the web and roughed one out in Illustrat…
Light up your Day
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Made this sign for my buddy’s 50th birthday. He loves the St. Louis Cardinals. it’s 11 inches wide. I’ve been doing the engraving in reverse on the back and it always looks better.
Right Round Baby Right Round
I am part prop maker and part mad scientist, today was more of the latter. I hate how my model paints separate when I don’t use them so I set out to solve it. One BBQ Rotisserie motor from the Thrift Store, a square metal rod, some rubber bands, and some things I cut out of plywood and the problem is solved. I’ll just store the paint in this rack until I outgrow the storage. I would love to power it with solar panels ultimately but for now this works.
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Engraving and Tooling Leather
Here are pictures. This leather was .113" thick, fairly substantial. I first did scores and cuts at 20% and 40% power and 100 in/min. It cut pretty deep, more than 1/2 way through.
Then I did a set of 5,10,15,20% power at 197 in/min or top speed for cutting and scoring (really made no difference as to score or cut. 5% power cuts just about through the top dense layer, on this leather about .02" deep. I used masking tape as a masking.
Although the 5% had the lightest char, all of the cuts and s…
Pleasing New Proofgrade
I got some more Proofgrade from Glowforge last week. Although labeled “beta”, it is as good as I would want or need. I did three matchbox bins with the three types to compare and contrast how it looks and fits together. No need to adjust the design. It’s dead on uniform in thickness.
First the Cherry:
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Back piece.
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Note that engrave does not leave too dark a layer visible in the keyhole slot.
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Detail of the white tree of Gondor. I did custom settings for this to get…
Pre-Release 3D Engraving Test (Not yet finalized - looks awesome.)
Super excited to share this with you guys! This is the thing I’ve been waiting for the most, and it turned out pretty awesome! I picked up some .25" poplar from Home Depot tonight and decided to see how it held up to 3D engraving. Well… check it out!
Material: Home Depot .25" Poplar craft board, 5.25" diameter disc
1st pass: 100% power, 335ipm, 340LPI - ~30 mins
2nd pass: 1% power, 150ipm, 340LPI - ~1hr
Source Image [image][image]
Durin…
DIY Heng Lamp
I’ve been a bit busy with other work recently but I’m still laser cutting stuff. I saw this awesome Heng Balance lamp on kickstarter and just knew I had to make one for myself. I quickly ran to my laser and put this together one evening last week
[DIY Heng]
I even wrote an instructable for it.
Laser Cut Loom
I’m sure there are a couple weavers here in the group. I came across this but there was little information about, only a couple hashtags, fabloom and fablab
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Sticky Stuff
So, I have been creating a lot of sticker creations lately with a tool called cricut to hold me off until my glow forge arrives (oh how I cannot wait, I have so many uses for it lol). Anyways, does anyone else here make custom stickers or creations with them? Hopefully I don’t go over board but thought you all would like to see a few of them.
Here is some before and after photos of stuff I made:
Shinedown wall art.
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Beer nut tin from christmas, I turn’t into a knife case.
[i…
Games Rule
Flock Around the Clock
While waiting for my GF to arrive, I’m trying to hone some skills that I’ll want to use with GF’d projects. One of those skills is flocking - applying a velvety coating to the inside of boxes. Here is my first (not-garbage) flocked item, a simple ring-bowl covered in polymer clay. The bowl itself was just a little pyrex dish. To get the flock to stick and look ok on the inside of the bowl, I discovered (after trying quite a few things) that painting the glass with a couple of layers of black acr…
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Thanks for curating this list every week!
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Agree totally …thanks @Jules !
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Jules, you are indeed a valuable asset to this community. Despite my occasionally giving you a hard time, I truly appreciate your selfless contributions, exuberance, and positive spirit!
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Jules
February 5, 2017, 8:26pm
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Awwwww…you’re making me blush…you guys are bad
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Jules
February 6, 2017, 1:31am
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Good grief…there I went again…
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We can do it all day long because you really deserve it.
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Jules
February 6, 2017, 3:04pm
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Chuckle! Don’t be too unkind…it’s the one reaction I absolutely have never gotten any control over…unexpected compliments of any kind cause me to light up like a brush fire.
I can blush right down to my toenails. My mother’s early influence no doubt…gentle southern gals are demure and modest at all times…you know the gig.
With me, it was apparently imprinted.
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My path home every day took me by her work. Once or twice a month I would hit the flower shop for a single red rose and bring it up to her office. Even after decades of marriage - She would blush like a school girl. I loved that!
A woman might smile or say something in gratitude, but when her whole body involuntarily reacts, you know you hit the bullseye!
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Jules
February 6, 2017, 6:35pm
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You have the most beautiful way with words. (Hope your wife appreciates it.)
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shop
February 7, 2017, 2:03am
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this is really cool and thanks for putting it together.
One link doesn’t work for me. When I go to the “Splish splash the honeycomb takes a bath” link, I get this error.
“Sorry, you don’t have access to that topic!”
Jules
February 7, 2017, 2:40am
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Oops! That one wasn’t ready yet and I forgot to unlink it. (We put these together early in the week.)
It’s being updated and will show up later in some future summary when it’s done…my bad!
1 Like
shop
February 7, 2017, 2:41am
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no worries! thanks for the update. and here i was thinking, “hey, is there a secret board i’m not allowed in?”
Jules
February 7, 2017, 2:42am
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Well yeah, there is, but i’m not allowed in either…the Betas have their own board.
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