MSRaynsford

A friend was asking about the best way to make a custom decision spinner, it seemed a simple job so I offered to do it on the laser instead. The details are all simple linework so it was quick to cut, I used a 3mm bolt in the middle and put a bearing in to make it spin more freely. The arrow hand was coloured black with sharpie. I don't think the arrow really had enough weight so it didn't spin for as long as I was hoping but at least it was functional. ( svg here )

The Christmas lights  are just neopixel strips hanging from the guttering. In previous years I've tried to make various hangups  to secure the strips in position relative to each other and the gutter but over time with the wind and rain they all start to droop and slide between the fixtures. This time around I had some appropriate lengths of 6mm exterior ply so it made sense to create a whole backboard fixture and cable tie the lights at regular intervals.  The boards were cut by hand and the holes drilled through all 4 boards at once so there wasn't much to laser cut but with that many holes to drill it made sense to create a jig to line up the hole drilling. The four boards were bolted together to avoid slippage and the jig had two of it's own bolts to align it easily with the previous row of holes. The hundreds of holes in the boards were drilled far faster than the strips attached to them.

The ladder lock broke on my loft ladder, maybe even a year ago. It's a minor irritation but now that I have a 3D printer that functions it's the kind of thing that I can look at fixing. The piece looked simple enough to replicate by measuring so I set about drawing up a replacement. The whole thing took about an hour with my children helping, the 3d print had a 50% infill to ensure it was string enough and took an hour to print ( stl here ) Before After The part was 3D modelled using Cinema4D, it's an old demo version from many moons ago. I need to spend some time learning Blender but it's good enough for now. The piece came out well and 3D printed at a sensible scale. I wish I had included a little bit more room for the yellow sliding latch. I simply included some washers as spacers before pop riveting it back onto the ladder. It works well and seems sturdy enough to last.

There was a second Panto cake I worked on with  Dawn  this year, she wanted a clock mechanism with hour and second hand. The hands were to rotate quickly to show that the hour had gone past midnight and a rotating cake, on one of my rotating platforms, would show a pumpkin turning into a carriage and back again. It would have been nice if the hands were in sync with the platform but time got the better of me and I settled for hands that worked. There was quite a bit of fettling to get one tube running smoothly inside the other, the gear mechanism was actually the easy part ( svg here )

Way way back in 2011 I started this blog with 365 things I made. They weren't good or even interesting and I was mostly learning how to draw but it was an interesting year and fairly productive. I feel like I've lost my way a little bit so I'm going to return to those roots again and do another 365 things this year. It shouldn't be as stressful as last time because I've already got around 100 things I didn't blog from last year due to one reason or another. I intend to share files where possible too which is another thing I've been lacking recently although they may come as bundles at the end of segments. This year though I also have a 3D printer and other tools so I'm sure the total output will be more than 365 but 365 laser cut things will be my target, I best get started. The new tag will be 365 Again