MSRaynsford

 I wanted some price tags for my craft faire, as everything can be laser cut these signs were a prime candidate. The text was done using the Hershey Font Generator now included in Inkscape, it makes text as a series of single line strokes which has a very neat effect when cut on the laser.

I made my own version of the Cat Jenga game that recently went round the webz. I cut myself all 24 cat shapes from that game and played my own cat stacking game. It's good fun and the cat shapes are great.

I have a Christmas Craft Faire at the weekend, it's the active arts craft market in Countesthorpe  if anyone wants to see me, so I thought I had better make something Christmassy to take along with me. Nichola suggested I make some fairy doors and it was a good idea, lots of places online for inspiration and lots of variety from a few simple pieces. 3 hours of drawing got me 12 different doors and a heap of accessories, 1 hour of cutting 1 hour of assembly. They came out so nice I cut a second set almost straight away. ( svg here ) The panels were coloured before cutting to avoid a whole heap of fiddly painting. I even got to use my linbins  to hold the different colours once they were removed from the laser. I even remember when just one item from these would take all day. It was nice to get these done and out the way.

Star trek style Com badges for a group of friends who were also going to be playing Artemis. Instead of pretending to be Humans of Earth, they were the Citizens of Klunge and they have rather interesting shaped space ships. Maybe the next time you see the crew of the TNG ejecting their warp core at the last possible moment you'll have a little chuckle too :)

The glueless box on my useless machine  caught the eye of someone over at Fujitsu Digital who thought they would be good boxes to house his prototypes, a few discussions and modification later I ended up cutting several of these boxes for them. I keep thinking I should make a parametric file for the glueless design but everything takes time.

Designed from this hand penned drawing of what the badge should look like, I lasercut 150 badges for the Derby Mini Maker Faire this year. The large block of text is simply outlined instead of engraved because it stands out better and is a lot faster to cut. The badge features a single row of engraving (even when all 8 badges are cut at once) because this reduces the amount of time to cut. All other details are simple line drawings or holes.  Kitronik  was kind enough to donate all the Birch ply for the project. The more observant amongst you will notice a code on the badge (1=S), because the badges were cut in sheets of 8 at a time it was possible to make 8 different badges. Each badge contained a number and a letter and was used to create a code that the visitors could break. It encouraged interaction between exhibitors and makers and completed forms could be return for a chance to win a prize. The code word was " Sorocold"  which you can see from the lin...

My arcade cabinet is nearly done, it's just waiting for the screen and bezel which involves me buying super skinny perspex (1mm and 2mm due to a mistake in the drawing).  It's made from 6mm Poplar ply, skinned with 3mm Poplar to hide the finger joints . The back door and the monitor cross brace are both made from 9mm poplar to give them a bit more strength.  While I had the laser cutter cutting all the panels I used the opportunity to cut pilot holes for all the hinges and brackets and I also embedded the speaker grill between the layers so it doesn't have to have visible screws on the front. The player panel and the banner are made from fluorescent blue perspex. The pattern was reversed and engraved on the back. The side panels were stained dark brown to make them look a bit more like real wood. The central panels were all wrapped with vinyl that has a carbon fibre pattern, the vinyl goes under the perspex which really makes the details stand out. Next thin...