MSRaynsford

Sam wanted me to cut some acrylic parts for her but she wanted them with a really deep engrave. The trouble with deep engraving on plastic is that it throws up a lot of dust which stains the work and fills the etch. I tried to reduce this staining by masking the area with tape first. I think it certainly reduced the amount of staining but I could have increased the power to get a much deeper etch.

One of the weapons I missed from the last batch for eldritch. This ying yang blade was made from several different thicknesses of foam to get some height effects on the handle. The actual symbol was just a simple line on the detailing.

Hebecon is a tournament of terrible improvised robot fighting, Jim McArthur  was looking to make a terrible improvised trophy when he wondered into our tent so he could use the pillar drill to attach a stainless steel mug to a camera tripod. In the spirit of improvisation I realised we didn't have the right thing to laser engrave onto the mug but we did have black sharpie which can be used to similar effect . The tournament looked great and I expect it will be even bigger at the next emf camp.

Dominic  had an idea to make some bike shedding dice, an amusing way to generate your next project full of buzzwords. Each dice was cut one side at a time using hershey text for the font, the die was then flipped and the next side cut. Amusement was had by all :)

The people over at EMF Pulse  made an epic guitar hero game with LED strips that were 8m tall. We laser cut them a larger sign which was more visible at night. It's a terrible shot of the awesomeness but it was pretty dark. The sign is made from a sheet of foam core, the pulse letters were removed and backed with red cardboard. The rest of the lettering was outline and ultimately coloured in with black pen with it was too hard to read.

The guys from think engineer  came through our tent with their minecraft sword and realised that we could personalise it for them. 10 minutes later they had their URL written down the side of the blade.

These branded leg benders were a handy little gadget for the soldering workshop at emf camp.

Alia Sheikh  had just come from a book binding workshop when she found our tent. She wondered if it would be possible to design a hard cover for her newly created notebook. We put together some simple designs from 1.5mm birch before we realised that if we put a hard cover on the front and back we wouldn't be able to open the book anymore. She now gets to decide if it is better to have front or back as the hardcover. She particularly liked the way the pattern on the cover could be seen through the emf logo. 

Continuing the flying theme I was asked to cut this drone framework  for somebody who was building a quadcopter. I chose poplar instead of mdf because it is stronger and lighter so I expect this will make a fun little unit if it ever actually flies.

Chris Stubbs brought us in a sheet of foamcore and some files to get some airplane parts lasered . We'll be keeping an eye on this build because it'll be awesome to see it flying. We left it with the reverse only just cut through, this makes it easier to carry all the parts off together.

Just like last time our tent needed a big sign to go on the outside, this one was cut from 3 ply corrugated card that was 20mm thick. It made the letters stand out quite well. I didn't have room for the shark and the laser beam so when Dominic complained that it was left off I improvised. The night air gave it some serious droop but it made me laugh anyway.

Before I had even finished setting up the laser and the tent I had things I wanted to laser cut. I took along some light fittings so we could play lasers after nightfall. I was a little bit worried about the slightly exposed contacts in the fittings and if they could touch the metalwork so I cut some small disks from 3mm mdf to sit between the fitting and the frame. Definitely no chance of an accident once they were in place.

Liesbeth  from the Fab Lab Truck Amsterdam  made the first laser cut badge case using the laser in the back of their van (The design that was brought to us was heavily based upon it) They were selling the cases and were too busy to do customisation so people were bringing them to us to have logos put on them. We did Hacksmiths , Rebel Makers  and Spotify (among others who got lost in the great camera mistake)

Mark Mellors  designed his version of the tilda badge case with a living hinge to run all the way round the edge of the box. The first one we cut was a bit too tight on the bend radius so the case snapped but this second one worked fine (I had to steal his images though as apparently I forgot to put the sd card into the camera). The neat thing about this design is that it just clips together without fixings. 

There are many different ways to skin a cat but Dominic decided to make his case from a skinned cow. This leather pouch was stitched along the edges to hold the badge securely in place. He also covered the leather in transfer tape  before cutting it to reduce the amount of burning and scorch marks there were on the surface of the leather. Because we didn't have vast piles of leather he made himself something rather unique and got many envious stares for the rest of the weekend. He also shared his files on Thingiverse .

One of the awesome things about EMF camp is that you get a really fancy electronic badge which is hackable and programmable. The Tilda Badge  is usually worn around the neck so there is opportunity for the components to be knocked off which so it's a sensible idea to get it in some kind of case to stop that happening. I cut several different designs of case for people over the weekend but this is my design for perspex/wood. I shared the files on thingiverse .