MSRaynsford

So this weekend I am decamping from the garage and recamping in a field. We are setting up the laser cutting village at EMF Camp , which basically means we'll be running our laser cutters for all and sundry to use in the middle of a maker festival. One of the best descriptions I've heard is that it's like a maker faire but without the public. I'm taking everything from tools and lasers right down to my workbenches and while this seems a tad intimidating it's actually going to be good for me. Now that I have a blank canvas to work with it should be much easier to fit my new A1 laser cutter into the garage when I return with it.

I scaled down the catapult kit to half the size, the catapult still packs the same amount of kick presumably because the projectiles are half the size too. We're intending to give these out as business cards at emf camp so head on over to the laser cutting village to pick one up.

It's definitely LRP season, these tax official sheriff style badges were made for a group at  the gathering . I also made a batch of the mage guild badges for another group (although I've left them to colour in their own stripes)

As a bit of a rush job last week I was asked if it was possible to make a cake stand, capable of rotating 6 individual cakes, like the teacups ride you'll find in a theme park. Because I'm a sucker for punishment and I was enthused by the idea I decided to take it one step further and have the teacups rotate around the central cake while they in turn were rotating. I fired up the trusty gear generator program  and designed myself a planetary gear mechanism that would achieve the desired motion. The layers use the  turntable mechanism I like now, there is potentially a lot of weight going through these things so it's nice to know that the load is not transferred to the motor. If I had to do it again I would change a few things to make it run smoother and definitely put in a large motor. In fact I would really love to make another one of these and perfect those minor issues so if anyone else wants a turntable cake stand then please speak up.