Chanukkah 2013

Had a hard time thinking of gifts for the neice and nephews, so I made them with the laser. Pretty much self explanitory. The car was made twice, once in opaque and once in transparent from the back. The red/transparent really glows.

First thing I felt ready to hang on the wall in the house....

I wanted to make something for a spot in the kitchen, so I chose the first intials of each of us in the family (probably will re-do later with other letters, but it's a good start). It's hard to see the detail in the picture, but I wanted to connect the letter witout being able to see the connector joint. The soulution was that each letter piece is two pieces - one 1/8" ply of Baltic Birch Plywood, and a 1/16" pience of basswood vaneer on top. The ply has the T-shaped notches for the connectors (see in blue of the incscape design), the vaneer doesn't. The result is really great.

 

However, some lessons were learned. Next time, I think I will finish the wood FIRST before cutting. The staining, sanding and finishing was really tough after it was cut. Also, a lesson learned before this was to not use Birch Plywood, but to use Baltic Birch Plywood. As seen in the image below, regular Birch can burn horribly when you try to cut it. This is because of layers of dark glule between the wood. The Baltic Birch Plywood uses a white glue, there are no dark layers when viewing from the side. The 1/8" cuts great at 30% speed and 100% power. I cut the vaneer at 80% and 100% power.

  

Reactor!

A while back I downloaded software from Jason Dorie's CNC website called Reactor (http://jasondorie.com/page_cnc.html), which creates a "reaction/diffusion" pattern seeded from an image. It's a really neat effect, but needs to be done with just the right image. So far, the only face shots I've successfully seen work are with sunglasses on. Here's on of my wife and I on the beach in Northern California. It's on black acrylic. I'd like to do it again on wood.  

Crosshair Aiming Lasers

My Full Spectrum 40W hobby laser came with a beam combiner for the red dot aiming, but then I read that the combiner lens can reduce the power of the laser up to 20%. I don't know how accurate that it is, but it makes sense that some of the power would be lost with it, so I went with option #2 instead. Based on Glenn's design here (http://glennlangton.blogspot.com/2011/08/laser-cutter-cross-hair-guide-for-under.html). However, I made a couple modifications. First, I modified the SVG to hold 2 of the Deal Extreme lasers, instead of reusing the original laser. That was a quick copy and paste of the arm section. Second, I added a line not all the way across the connected side of the arm so that I could easy bend the arms with heat.

The red line lasers were horribly out of focus. So, I laser cut a small circle with a slit (0.312" diameter) of the top of a post-it, and stuck this over the Fresnel lens on the inside of the laser. The result was a much more crisp line. To aim the lasers, I used the machine to vector two lines onto a piece of wood, then aligned the lasers to these lines. A couple drops of super glue went onto the lasers after they were aimed to help hold them tight.

The photos below, the red lines appear fuzzier than they really are, the phone's camera was too sensitive to the red light. I have a little cleanup to do still on the wiring.

A little practice with Escher

Here's a couple pieces I did this afternoon to play a little with 1/8" birch ply. I'd eventually like to do a bigger lizard tessalation. These are just test pieces. I find it hard to cut without significantly smoking the edges. These were cut at 60% speed, 100% power, 2 passes. The thin lines were 100% speed, 20% power. The Sky and Water engraving was at 100% speed and 50% power, 500x500.  Probably to much, I lost a little detail, maybe 30% next time. 

Circuit Stand

A few months before purchasing the laser cutter, I designed this small circuit to simulate electrical signals for the equipment I work with. While the circuit wasn't designed really for mounting, I came up with this little stand to make it a little nicer looking. It's smoke grey 3/16" Acrylic, rastering was at 100% speed 100% power, vector cuts were 10% speed 60% power. 

Free Patterns

I came across this site with lots of free vector patterns. I think these will be useful later on. 

http://www.craftsmanspace.com/free-patterns

Butterfly Test Cut....

Found an easy butterfly graphic for my next text cut, it was easy to modify to get into the right format, and the cutting went well. 1/8" ply. The first one I did was at 30% speed and 40% power, it didn't quite make it through all the way on all the lines, so I did another at 30% speed and 50% power, it came out very clean. The kerf is very tight, should be good for any application I have in mind.

As you can see from the pictures, smoke is very minimal, the exhaust system does a wonderful job.

 

First Fire....

With the water, air and exhaust hooked up, it was time for a few test fires. I was going to check the mirror alignment first, but I decided what the heck and did some test fires on some cheap 1/8" ply I had laying around. I played with several different settings to see how they would effect the cuts. You can see in pencil on the photo the speed/power I used for each cut to get an idea of what the machine does.

The good news was that the exhaust system is working really great, it kept the work area clear and all smoke was always completely gone after about 1 second after the cutting was done. In fact, I think that the exhaust makes the air assist somewhat worthless. The bottom two pieces that were cut out were with the air on and with the air off, there was very little difference.

Next up to play with was a couple of black river rocks. I figured since my wife's aunt and uncle were leaving today, I'd try out their names. This was at about 40% speed, 95% power.

Starting out with a Full Spectrum 40W Laser....

This is a new blog to share my experiences with a new (used) Full Spectrum 40W Hobby Laser I picked up off Craigslist. I've been shopping around for a while and am hoping to try out a few different things I've had on my mind to laser out.

First things First,  I needed to set things up. Unfortunately, where I wanted to put the laser in the basement didn't have a good way for "easy" ventilation, so I had to go big. I purchased a 190 cfm inline centrifugal type fan, ran 25' of 6", then 15' of 4" rigid duct across the 3-car garage and down into the workshop. The fan is hooked up to a wireless remote, so I can didn't have to run wiring all that way. Next, a bench was built and electrical run. All I needed next was to hookup the cooling water and I'd be ready to fire!

A big thank you to Glen Langton for the help!!!