Weekly Highlights for the week of 04-DEC-16

[jacobturner]

These are the posts about things made by Beta and Pre-Production users which are worth highlighting:

Beta Project: 3D Depth Engrave Initial Tests

In an attempt to try and learn more about how to create my own designs using gradient 3D depth grayscale engraving, I used google image search and I found some images online to try out. Keep in mind that these are fairly low resolution ‘web’ images to start with. I did increase the resolution to 300dpi (keeping the ‘print’ dimensions the same) and they are small. I’m sure that much higher quality source images would produce much higher quality results with much finer detail. Pretty sure these m…

Beta Project: Photo Engravings

I decided to try and work with engraving photos, and test out some of the manual settings to see some differences and learn about the possibilities as well as to see results in different wood types. I had already experimented with using halftone patterns to artistically reproduce photo imagery (Beta Project: Halftone Pattern Engraving), but these were still rasterized engravings from vector .svg sources. This would be straight raster (pixel based) .png images, converted to grayscale, …

Real World Example of image placement results

I’m not putting this in a topic about the bed, the X,Y or the homing zero positions topics. I’m putting this here as a start to the investigation of how the Glowforge operates and not how we wish it to operate. I’m pretty sure those two ends will coincide. Screen captures and other images to follow. Please disregard portrait video. I need to remember that when leaning over things and shooting video, I have to check orientation. Lesson learned. Ok, another lesson learned is to figure out the…

Kuchi Kopi returns

My daughter and her obsession with Kuchi Kopi has returned for another project. I had her run through the whole process of printing this time. She did her usual hunt around the web for a picture she liked, then traced it in Illustrator. She saved it as an SVG, then uploaded it to the designs, choose which objects should be cut/raster/score and finally print. Here she is eagerly waiting to see how it turns out. [image] We chose to score most of the lines in the design which made it a pretty…

Acetal plastic

So, a while back I’d asked if there was any Delrin or acetal plastic available to play with. I finally got a chance to play with some. From experience on other lasers I know that I usually have to cut it a bit slower than I do acrylic so I took a calculated guess to start at and it actually worked the first try. I was using some 1/8 inch white acetal that I’ve used on other machines. It cuts like melting candle wax really and though you don’t get really crisp edges like you do with acrylic, …

Beta Project: More Simple Shapes

Hello again! Ok, I’ve gone back to making some more simple shapes. Joints are easy peasey when they are 90’s, so I wanted to work out some tougher joints. First I set out to build a octagonal column. Here’s the CAD. [image] Then I moved on to adding a hip roof to a square tower. Here’s the CAD for that. [image] I was pleasantly surprised when everything snapped together nicely on the first try. [image] [image] And that’s that. I need to make an octagonal roof now.

Beta Project: Leather Bracelets

After some success working with leather on the earring project and further experiments (Beta Project: Leather Earring Experiments), I decided to continue to see what else I could come up with. So, I designed and created some simple bracelets. I’ve been busy over the past few weeks with a weekend out of town, and then school being out for the girls all Thanksgiving week, and the holiday itself, etc. But, I do have a number of other beta projects to share very soon following this one. S…

Snowflake Ornament

Was testing out some 1/8" plywood and decided we needed another ornament so I found a nice Star Wars design to play with. [image] A little paint and of course glitter makes everything better [image]

More fidget toys

Inspired by Kallisti’s work on the cool fidget toys I ordered some bearings with the intention of making some stocking stuffers. I started with a simple design I’d seen before, just a triangular design with bearings at each point and in the center. A friend at work actually beat me to it and made one the day before I got my bearings in the mail so I was able to use his design to work out the details like what size holes I needed to counter the kerf of the laser. I cut a couple of sample holes…

Beta project: Ouija board

[image] [image][image][image]The epoxy looks great, but sadly I now need to find something that slides on it nicely since the puck doesn’t move well currently. Maybe I can find some bearings or something to mount to the bottom of the puck