MSRaynsford

They may not look like a lot but jigs like this can be pivotal to the success of a large project like the 100 coasters I made yesterday. If you're going to be doing anything 100 times it's worth spending a few minutes considering how you can make each step smoother to cut down on assembly time. Here are just a few questions you want to think about and if you answer 'Yes' to any of them you probably want to make yourself a jig. Thankfully the laser cutter is particularly good at making jigs for parts as well as the parts themselves. What is the most efficient order for assembly? Do parts have to be specifically aligned to each other? Where does the glue have to go and are there places where the glue shouldn't go? How do you remove the part from the jig once it is assembled? These coasters break down into 2 parts of 3 layers each. The inner triangle has a middle layer that is smaller than the outer layers, this means it needs to be aligned perfectly in...

I had a pretty busy and productive day yesterday assembling these coasters . They're now headed off into the post with the hope that they'll arrive in Edingburgh for an exhibition at the weekend. 100 coasters in a (long) day is not bad work at all.

Basingstoke Makerspace recently asked if I would be able to modify the design of the Reading Hackspace tool key ring  to include their logo (a small piece that they use to demonstrate the lasers capabilities). It was a simple task but I thought I might as well cut one at the same time. The Hershey text containing the URL is perhaps a little bit small but I was impressed that the laser picked up all the details.

Once you take shiny things to a LRP event people start to realise how useful they can be, the trouble is that everybody really needs something different so they can identify it as their own. Wood dyes have been extremely useful to reproduce these sets of vale runes . Everything else is the same really but the wood was dyed before being cut so they end up looking quite different.

I made these story disks for Vale, each one has an encrypted message spiralling around the disk from the inside out. The encryption is made even harder by the fact it is displayed in the vales own font, 26 runes representing the 26 letters of the alphabet.