MSRaynsford

  I saw a picture of a Cat based alphabet which was doing the rounds on social media this morning, I was unable to trace the original source but I thought it was awesome and would lend itself to laser cutting because of it's basic line styling. It also makes a very good exercise in constructing an SVG font so I thought I would write it up. An SVG font was originally intended as a way of embedding font information inside an SVG document. Icon fonts and SVG fonts are now used widely across the internet due to their ability to store a collection of images within a single file. Each unicode  character references a different image and these images can be any drawing you like as defined by the SVG standard. A traditional font requires a series of filled shapes, the letter 'I' for example would be a filled rectangle. While laser cutting the process of shading that rectangle would be done by engraving, filling it with a series of dots which is very time consuming. An alternate wou...

I've had quite a lot of fun over the last few months designing myself a new puzzle set to run on Kickstarter. This set is different to the previous fractal puzzle because the whole thing has a Greek theme and a story running across the whole thing. Each puzzle is based upon on of the Greek myths and is a challenge accordingly. The five tablets come wrapped in a puzzle box which hides more than just it's innards. Like previous puzzle launches I'm using kickstarter again because of it's reach. Why not follow along and see how well it does, maybe even purchase your own set. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/msraynsford/the-antikythera-tablets

There are always going to be projects I can't show on my blog, some things are best left secrets until you need to find them and I honestly thought this was going to be one of them. At the start of the year I got involved making another escape room but this time for One Way Out Escape  in Oakham. You'll see the plot if you watch the trailer, but this cute little robot is central to the story and is filled with laser cut parts and other interesting goodies. The suitcase too is also full of laser cut parts and even some more manual parts (I did metalworking), over the course of several months we refined the puzzles and tweaked bits until the whole thing worked properly and then the country went into lockdown. Now as we're coming out the other side the game is actually available to play and some of you will get to see what I've actually been working on. You may recognise the suitcase itself from the previous blog post about engraving on the side of it  but Tess has done a ...

Duncan  asked for a respin on the  knife boxes  with some slightly different dimensions more suited to his knives, at the same time he wanted to try a sliding lid. This design uses 1.5mm birch to form rails down along the top which is much more reliable than engraving slots. Because the rail is only on two sides it can be made with just the tiniest slither of 1.5mm, which is twice as expensive as the 3mm. It also only adds a small amount to the overall height so it's a nice compromise. I laser cut some cardboard inserts to go into the boxes to hold the knives in place. Duncan sent me the handle shape so I'm not sure how he worked it out but it's easy to see why a laser would be good at consistently cutting a curve like that. I also revamped the originally flappy lid design with the new dimensions, it's a slightly better design for this purpose so this is still the one we're going with.

The G Weike machines we imported from China were always quite big, they didn't split in the middle and they wouldn't fit through a single doorway, this was because the Z axis drops all the way down to the floor allowing you to engrave the surface of deep boxes. In reality this is something nobody ever does and fitting machines through doorways is far more common but just this once I actually used the maximum capacity of the machine. With the Z axis all the way down to the floor and the nozzle extension tube shortened I was just about able to fit this travellers chest into my machine. I had to pad the bottom side of the chest to keep it flat and level. If you're interested in discovering more about this box and the contents then you can check it out at One Way Out Escape Rooms , it's central to their new game 'Robots Return' . They're cautiously opening again on the 4th of July to single households and I can vouch that their games are great to play, I'm o...

With the current rules regarding social distancing, physical contact is obviously being kept to a minimum and these 'pocket hugs' are becoming increasingly popular. I was asked to make some personalised hugs for a friend. These are made from spruce  which has a nice visible grain, the engraving and lettering could have been a little darker and I probably should have masked the reverse to avoid reflections but for a quick job it's acceptable ( svg here )

The last in the egg series that I'm going to be printing, the time lapse process is working well so it's time to move onto bigger and better ideas. This print produced quite a few little loops while jumping between the separate wavy parts so I definitely need to take a look at retraction and a few of the other printer settings. I also need to look at my starting code too so I can get a better first layer, there's a dribble of filament before it starts putting down a layer which can get in the way and Octoprint is still complaining about the lack of G90 instruction to indicate the start of printing (even though it definitely exists). Lots of fun to be had there ( stl here )

Another one of the fancy egg range, I'm not entirely sure what makes this 'complex' because it's simply a mirror of the previous egg shape merged with itself but it still makes a fancy pattern and a neat timelapse anyway so it's all good from my point of view ( stl here )

Ape Index  wanted some more quick and easy stencils which I'm happy to do, especially if the material is cheap. As these are only going to be used two or three times it doesn't make sense to do them in mylar so I recycled some of the cardboard boxes that my Kitronik orders came in to flat sheets perfect for this use. Free is a perfect price for a job like this, my only trouble will now be carrying large flat sheets into town as part of my daily exercise :)

I went back the the Egg shapes I started printing over Easter. Now I've improved the 3D printer timelapse camera and lighting they make a much nicer video ( stl here )

One of the more interesting designs I found while looking at Tensegrity structures was this cube design where the cubes are strong together in such a way that they float over each other at any angle. The two interlocking cubes lend themselves perfectly well to 3D printing and including string holes in all the corners. The design works well but it's a bit tricky to get the strings adjusted to the right lengths, hence the large knots on the corners. ( stl here ) There are two version of the design, one with DIY supports and one without, I'm probably not experienced enough to get my slicer to create supports in the way that I wanted it to. It was also a good exercise in OnShape design, particularly trying to get the cube to stand on one end. ( OnShape Workspace )

For some home schooling last week Eli, Hazel and I made tensegrity structures, which are all popular online at the moment. All of the string elements in the design are actually under tension which gives them the effect that parts are floating in the air and hanging off each other. I laser cut my design (above) from 1.5mm flexible ply , available from Kitronik, which has the right combination of strength and spring. My version has two strings running from top to bottom which eliminates the twisting, caused by gravity, that you usually see with this design. The nylon cord pinches into notches on the wood so it doesn't even need knots tying in it. ( svg here ) 

We've played a bit of the Scythe board game recently and even though the factory tile in the middle is an important location, it's rather overlooked because it's just a different coloured hex. This factory model sits on the centre hex and gives a sense of the importance it deserves. ( stl here ) In case you're wondering how I got that 90 degree twist in the time lapse video, there are no special tricks I just printed it pointing in a bad direction first and because I know more than one person who owns the game I decide I would just reprint it pointing in a better direction. This does however give me some interesting ideas about time lapses in the future. For now my next stop will be to modify Octolapse to take some more of the manual work out of time lapse generation.

It's been a long time since I made that pun and shared this file, I'm probably safe to use it again. My kids have been getting subscriptions to their magazines for a while now and it's great during lock down, each week a comic arrives and takes their minds completely elsewhere. They've now got so many comics they need something to store them in so I looked back at my previous Knuff design and hurried to cut them out.  Clearly a lot changes in 5 years and there are better things I do to present the file but most significantly when I recut the files this time around they still didn't work, now the whole thing has been updated, checked, rechecked and demonstrated to be working. ( svg here )

I ran a 3D print for an Iron man bust last night. It's a good test of the timelapse rig again which is now working nicely but also good practice for painting techniques. The 3D print is still covered in ridges but the iron man suit should be nice and smooth so I'll need to figure that out. I have a feeling the the model on this one wasn't watertight because there is an oddity at the back of the head and most of the top seems to be filled with support material rather than infill. ( stl here )

I have enjoyed creating all the timelapse shots recently, Octolapse is a great addition to Octoprint  making it easy to create amazing shots. Once I dealt with my lighting and white balance issues I started to look at my video process. The print bed lowers on my machine so, with a static camera, the 3D print has to start at the top of the screen and fill into the lower half. I preferred a video where the print started in the middle of the screen. A mechanical solution to keep the print in the middle of the screen seemed to be the easiest solution. I made a video about it as well as this blog post, if you like it please subscribe and I'll make more videos. The design is relatively simple, the camera is still mounted to the top of the frame but an arm extends from the camera rig out under the print bed. As the bed descends the arm is pushed downwards and this motion is used to tilt the camera downwards. On it's own this would have the effect of making the prin...

I have built a time lapse rig to tilt the camera and help me take nice time lapse shots, this vase was a quick printing test piece to help me check that it's all working as it should be. There's still a minor tweak to be done to some angles but otherwise the rig is working fine, it's completely 3D printed and all that's left for me to do now is to prepare the files for sharing.