Hey there,
Lots of things over the past few years. I will list them here and just let me know if you want more details.
Most recently to oldest
*Built a new stand/rolling cart with laptop drawer and monitor mount
*Air hose regulator so I can easily toggle the air for the assist on and off without messing with the compressor valve
*Microcontroller based thermostat that triggers LED lights when water for the coolant gets too hot
*Cohesion 360 board so I can use lightburn and control power intensity from computer
*Secondary power supply to run case upgrades
*Extra case lights
*Intake fans
*Laser crosshairs
*Drag chain for air assist and laser cross hair wires
*analog Ammeter
*analog flow gauge
*Scissor lift
*Honeycomb bed
*Inline exhaust setup
The Ryan's Steakhouse Incident. Stumbled across it over a decade ago and still the memory of it makes me laugh.
Did you ever find the answer to your question?
It will depend on your lenses and their corresponding focal length. Normally for cutting you want that focal point to hit halfway through the thickness of the material you are cutting. For etching slate I would put that focal length right at the surface.
The standard focal length for a k40, which is the laser I use, with the stock lenses is 50.8mm I believe.
I have a k40, it's a Chinese laser cutter that can be had for around $400.
It's been great for me.
Cool! What do you use for finish?
Nice! Now you need to make a box to store them in
The colors are a nice touch! Thanks for sharing
I have been thinking about making new boxes for a few different games so saving this idea for later.
I have been trying to figure out in my head how I could do a lasercut version of Battleship too.
I read somewhere that it takes around 150 hours of interaction to generate that bond of friendship between men.
That seems both a small number and a very daunting one given how many people live relative isolation today. Someone might say, join a club and make friends, but if that number is right that's an hour long weekly meetup for three years.
A friend of mine asked if I could make something for his sister who operates a local cat foster program. These follow the same design I used when I made these for my own sisters (previous post) only I did not make a frame for this one.
Here you can see the four layers of 3mm plywood I cut out on my laser cutter
Sanded and stacked together
Stained and glued together
Spray polyurethane added
I'll have to play around with some of these. Any you have found useful?
That is cool thanks for sharing.
I built this table for my sister-in-law back in 2016. She had just moved into her first home and asked if I would could maybe build a small farmhouse style table.
At this point I was relatively new to the hobby and had never built a proper piece of furniture that would function as a center piece for a room. She also did not have much money to spend so I came up with a plan to use some old barn wood I had scrounged up for the legs and construction lumber for the top.
There is a lot of internet hate out there for construction lumber projects, but I think if done right they can be an affordable option for folks. It's been 7 years now and this still sits in her dining room getting daily use. It has zero cupping, or wobble, and has remained as sturdy as the day I made it.
Being pine it is very soft wood and so it has its share of dings and scratches, but because it was made to look distressed from the beginning that just adds to it.
I picked the straightest and cleanest boards I could get from the hardware store. Focusing on 26 and 210 stock.
The first challenge working with construction lumber that I needed to overcome was moisture. It is kiln dried but still not to the level you'd get with higher quality lumber.I started by stacking the wood in my humidity controlled garage and letting it sit for about a month.
While that was drying I worked on the barnwood legs. I had two salvaged boards and came up with a design that used most of it
I used a wire brush and water to clean up the grime
Skipping ahead in the process a bit since I didn't do a great job taking pictures. For the top I ripped down the thicker boards, discarding the center part of the 2*10s to try and get rid of the tension caused by the center rings. I was worried this would lead to cupping. For each board I rotated the grain up and down so any cupping that did occur on an individual board level would hopefully off set. I used biscuits to help with alignment during the glue up
Breadboard ends are floating to allow for expansion and contracting of the top. I figured maybe this would be a failure point over time and someone leaning on the edges would break one off, but so far so good. The other issue here is that I made the tennon go all the way to the ends of the breadboard, which doesn't hurt anything but over time as the wood has shrunk it has left 1/8 gap on the ends that could have otherwise been hidden.
Testing out stain and destressing combinations
Adding prestain conditioner to help with the blotchiness associated with staining pine. You can see that issue with the through tennon I mentioned above. It was flush here but has since retracted a bit
Stained
Here you can see the solution I came up with for attaching the top to allow for expansion but keep it flat. There is also a center beam they used lag screws. Since that is only in the middle I don't need to worry about it pulling itself apart. This picture was several years later so you can see the shrinkage. It is otherwise flat and stable though. Ideally I would have had extra barn wood to help with the cross beams and more closely match the legs but unfortunately I did not
The top was then finished with a Danish oil and waxed
Edit: Bonus blooper
Picked up some walnut, cherry, and maple with the idea of making some end grain cutting boards for people for Christmas
Cut to rough lengths
Jointed and planed to square up the lumber
Cutting the boards into strips
Figuring out patters for the initial glue up
Initial glue up
Scraping off the dried glue and prepping for another trip to the planer
Getting ready for the second round of cutting
Figuring out the layout for the crosscut pieces for the second glue up
Second glue up
Glued dry now to the router table to round the edges so they don't blow out when I run them through the planer
Lots and lots of sanding
Soaked in mineral oil
Boards are finished with a beeswax and mineral oil paste that I made. Here are a sitting in plastic wrap getting ready to put in gift bags.
I had a gap in the wall from where an old monitor mount used to be attached so wanted to make something to cover it up.
The LEDs are controlled by an ESP8622 running WLED, monitor data from the PC comes from Hyperion software. It can be set to a constant color, dozens of set themes, or match the color output of whatever is on my monitor.
The microcontroller sits under the desk and receives constant power, it is the wired to a button on my desk to turn on/off power to the LEDs.
Laser cutter action:
I tried to give it an aged rock/stone appearance using some textured spray paint which actually turned out pretty well. I think some of that doesn't come across well in the photos, but in person it looks good (to me anyway).
LEDs changing color https://imgur.com/a/8CmepDk
How to get WLED running: https://tynick.com/blog/11-03-2019/getting-started-with-wled-on-esp8266/
More info about Hyperion https://docs.hyperion-project.org/en/user/leddevices/
cross-posted from my post here: https://lemm.ee/post/1063150
I had a gap in the wall from where an old monitor mount used to be attached so wanted to make something to cover it up.
The LEDs are controlled by an ESP8622 running WLED, monitor data from the PC comes from Hyperion software. It can be set to a constant color, dozens of set themes, or match the color output of whatever is on my monitor.
The microcontroller sits under the desk and receives constant power, it is the wired to a button on my desk to turn on/off power to the LEDs.
Laser cutter action:
I tried to give it an aged rock/stone appearance using some textured spray paint which actually turned out pretty well. I think some of that doesn't come across well in the photos, but in person it looks good (to me anyway).
LEDs changing color https://imgur.com/a/8CmepDk
How to get WLED running: https://tynick.com/blog/11-03-2019/getting-started-with-wled-on-esp8266/
More info about Hyperion https://docs.hyperion-project.org/en/user/leddevices/
I was attempting to build a Kentucky stick chair, but accidentally bought too stiff of wire so had to pivot to a more rigid design. The end result is a not so comfortable folding chair. It works for me because I am tall and my legs clear the seat and touch the ground without issue. Not the case for my wife.
Here is what it was supposed to look like. Because the wire I used was too stiff I could not get the chair to sinch together so had to add spacers.
This chair is made from a couple cedar deck planks. They were first cut into strips
Strips cut to size for the back, middle,seat
Jig made to quickly make repeat holes for the hardware
Holes done
Assembly begins
Back to the drawing board, spacers added
Applying deck stain
Done
Had some left over red acrylic so made a simple support for my GPU
I have a family member that is big into Weber charcoal grills, and each year he and all the other grilling enthusiasts from around the country get together for their annual meet up.
To commerate his last meet up I made him a set of slate coasters featuring Topper, the original logo for Weber grills.
Blank slate coasters purchased off Amazon. I think they come out to about $1 per coaster. The process is pretty simple. I put masking tape down on the bed of the laser then lightly etch a a few circles so that I can quickly center the blank coasters in my machine for batch etching.
You will notice some are darker than others, that is because I spray a light coat of poly which makes the etching pop. The darker ones already have been sprayed.
I also made a caddy to hold the coasters
cross-posted from laser cutting community [email protected] : https://lemm.ee/post/896795
This was my first real dive into Arduino and multiple button mapping. It took a significant amount of trouble shooting and learning the software to get things to map to the computer action.
Gif of the action https://imgur.com/a/XI9KTeH
Prototype 1:Started this project before I had a laser cutter and had tried to just drill through acrylic. It didn't work well, but it held my buttons during testing
Prototype 2 Still no laser cutter but I cut out using plywood worked much better for manually cutting out the holes
Prototype 3 Much better
This was my first real dive into Arduino and multiple button mapping. It took a significant amount of trouble shooting and learning the software to get things to map to the computer action.
Gif of the action https://imgur.com/a/XI9KTeH
Prototype 1:Started this project before I had a laser cutter and had tried to just drill through acrylic. It didn't work well, but it held my buttons during testing
Prototype 2
Still no laser cutter but I cut out using plywood worked much better for manually cutting out the holes
Prototype 3
Much better
I had bought a big box of bulk Pokemon cards off of eBay and had been giving the kids a few each time they did their chores or as positive reinforcement when the did something good.
I wanted to find a way to make it more fun so came up with this prize wheel. Instead of just giving them two cards from the pile they get to spin the wheel and the corresponding prize. Usually just let's them look at a few cards and pick the one they want vs random getting one.
There were some "rare" cards too which they had a chance to win.
It has worked fine. No issues with stability or leveling.
Getting it to the right height is a bit of a hassle if you change material thickness frequently because in order to adjust it I have to remove the work piece and the honeycomb bed, turn the screw, add everything back to check if it's right, and if not, repeat the process until it's dialed in. Usually I am working with 3mm ply though so it's not very often I need to fiddle with it, and when I need to work on something bulky it's nice to be able to lift it without for added depth.