I got me a laser cutter, awesome!

Ok, because I have more balsa lying around than acrylic.

I quickly made a Lancaster to go with the Spitfire I made earlier. I will make a Hurricane later and make a stand for all 3 in a Battle of Britain formation.

Honestly this thing is great!

lancaster1.jpg


lancaster2.jpg


Those props are very fragile!
 
xJcBx said:
He's into Airfix model planes, and that's something a bit different.

I have no idea on what planes are what, but any would be ace :D
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Cool, later on I am going to make a better version.

Mail me in trust and if you PayPal me the cost of a hard backed envelope and postage, I will send one out he can glue :-)
 
tres said:
Can you print stickers??
How interesting....
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I have a craft robo.

You can layout artwork, then create contours around them. print out the artwork and it adds registration marks.

Then it uses these to detect orientation and cuts out the contours around the print outs.

That is how I cut these stickers.

control.jpg


warning.jpg
 
I can do the RedArrows as a kit for £10 delivered. The engraving takes 21 mins and that is tube time. Not bad considering laser time is normally £50 an hour.

I will do a limited run of the kits, as they will be OCUK exclusives :-) (And I am running out of balsa).
 
valve90210 said:
I can do....



That's what I've got too, though not used it much since I got it about a year or so ago.

I might have to pick your brains on it sometime if that's ok?

Out of interest, which software do you use, Robo Master or Design Master...or indeed illustrator with the plugin...or something else entirely?

Valve
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I am a CorelDraw man (hate illustrator). What I do is all my artwork in Corel. Images, bla bla bla. Then I create a contour around this in a different colour.

I then select and export the coloured contour as a DXF. Then make the contour transparent and export the rest as a WMF. The reason for making the contour transparent is that the wmf is the same size as the dxf (important).

Then in Robomaster, import DXF, set to X0,Y0. Insert the WMF, and set to the same dimensions and position as the dxf (sometimes Robomaster imports them as 10x10px). Because I set the wmf to the same size as the dxf (with the contour) they scale correctly.

Then it is a case of adding registration marks and seding to the cutter.

Easy peasy.
 
whitecrook said:
What is the res on say the balsa wood? Could you 'burn' an image of say a 300dpi scanned newspaper on to a bit of balsa? Or even onto a bit of heavy cartridge paper?(for some literal laser printing) Could make for some interesting B&W style photo prints if you output a halftoned image.

Hangon, can it even print rasterised graphics ?
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It can print rasters. The green bits here are a bitmap. I have it set to 500dpi at the moment. The control software does all the hard work in conversions from colour to mono bitmaps. It works just like a printer. The head moves back and forth burning with different powered pin spots of light.

I just swapped out the water pump, so waiting for all the air to dissapate through the tube. Then I need to re-align everything and I will do a test print/burn.

As for the max height of objects I think I can get things that are about 4" high in there (the bed is adjustable).

For ultimate coolness I am going to make a rotary bed. So i can engrave cylindrical things, like glasses and bottles :-)

Pinter, I'm wanting to make a custom cat flap and need the Perspex cutting for the swing door, is it a service you would consider?
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Yup, I can do 3mm stuff easily, more with more passes. I have clear, opal, trans Orange, black and white here now. If you send me cdr (v12 or earlier) or a DXF (max size is 260x160cms) I can take a look for ya.

How much for 10 key rings?? similar size to the OCUK thing you did???
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Again send me a dxf or CDR or even a bitmap of what you need, and we can work out a deal.

It will be cheap for forum members, as I am not really running a laser cutting service (yet) :-)

Mostly tube time and materials.
 
Yup I plan to do some cylindrical things. I figure I can make a mount (need to find some rollers, any ideas?). I have some stepper motors. I can add a plug so the rotary attachment uses the Y motor pulses to rotate rather then move in the Y axis.

Then I can do all kind of cool engraving on stuff.

I am also looking for some 3mm birch int plywood. I have some speakers to make and a very strange idea for an iPod dock which I think will rock!

Still my favourite toy!

Thanks for the stars, we aim to please the internet with kittens and lasers :-)
 
Ok, Tried engraving a bitmap onto some balsa.

Turned out very well considering it would normally burn balsa easily.

engraving.jpg


Example of detail, the 'n' in Incredible is 1.8mm across!

Who wants their iPod lasered :-)

BTW photo does not do it justice, looks amazing in real life, I can even read the date which is minute!

Source image is here: http://www.fodey.com/static/images/preview_newspaper.jpg I scaled it down even smaller.
 
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Ok, popped out to get some 3mm Ply, they had 1.5mm but that was 3x the price!

Did some tests, Ply is a bit tough to get through. They didn't know if it was int or ext ply. Ext ply has back glue which absorbs the laser light.

Anyhow I managed to output a box :-)

Did a clear acrylic one too. Still needs aligning a bit.

boxes.jpg
 
Lakeland said:
Very nice, finger joints can be a tad annoying making sure all line up :p I find it fairly easy now but the first few models I did made my head hurt!
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Nice work! I really like the rounded edges.

As for the finger joints, I cheated and used a free program to create a pdf of what i needed.

My Ply is getting there, it is all about speeds and power. Hopefully today i will have some little speaker boxes made :-)
 
Squark said:
Laser cut an Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube :)
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heh heh, cool.

I just got back from tweaking settings to do 3mm Birch Ply. So I made a little speaker enclosure for some old cones I had lying about. The cones are 60mm.

Cut time 10mins - as it goes quite slowly.

A coat of varnish is next.

spkr1.jpg


spkr2.jpg


spkr3.jpg


I may mod my own iPod dock with a twist next.
 
sid said:
I hope you are taking laser safety seriously, 40W is a lot of invisible power. I'm sure a lot of that will scatter back. I see you are running the laser with the top open. I would be very careful of scatter at that sort of power.

It does look like you know what you are doing so I'm not gonna patronise you though!

sid
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Thanks for your concern :-)

Lid is always shut unless I am filming, and hiding behind some orange acrylic :-)
 
Ok, time for something productive, now I have it all setup properly (I think).

I cut one of my little Arduino bots out of 3mm ply, and I think I prefer it over the acrylic version.

What do you think?

woodbb.jpg


The wooden one.

woodbb1.jpg


Vs the acrylic one.
 
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