MSRaynsford

I made a large countdown clock for a LRP event last year, once the event was over however there aren't a lot of uses for a 99 minute countdown. I offered to put in some additional functionality and turn it into a real clock using an RTC chip. These DS3231 are super cheap anyway and I probably should have included it first time around. The second issue was that the tape I used to diffuse the lights had absorbed some moisture and gone horribly wrinkled. Once the RTC was installed I ended up replacing the front cover with some Mylar stencil material which is damp proof but clearly doesn't do as well at diffusing the light. Internal to the clock I laser cut some packing foam in the shape of the 7 segments and inserted those into the gaps for the digits. This did a much better job at diffusing the light and made the whole thing functional again. The RTC is battery backed and should hold it's time for a while, it's currently reset by programming on the Arduino ...

I had a little run on parts for Eldritch, I've done these foam saw blades before but this time I was just squeezing as many parts into the sheet as possible. Where I was unable to cut full disks I cut some half disk instead to really optimise the foam usage. Simon turns them into great, futuristic/post apocalyptic LRP weapons.

A bit of a sad one for these scales. They were for a cosplay costume based on Avengers Endgame. It turns out that 2mm foam was too thick for the scales and the 1mm foam didn't arrive in time for the convention. These scales were cut on my newer laser though and the RF tube seems to have made a lot of difference to the vertical cuts. The 100W glass tube blasts away a big 'V' shape in the foam where as the 30W seems to have cut away just enough with minimal reflections. I shall cut more foam on the faster machine in the future.

Another collaboration with Eldritch , this is the Zaros Godsword from Runescape. Using this image as a reference I was able to draw up and cut the sword, although I quickly realised the sword in the image isn't straight so I had to take a few liberties with the final piece. It's built like a normal LRP weapon with a carbon fibre rod core and multiple layers of plastazote LD45 foam. The finished piece was glued, latexed and coloured by Eldritch. It's a bit hard to see on the white foam but the blade was actually engraved with a design.

I made another superman logo for a cosplayer in the same style as this one . It's actually two layers of 6mm LD45 foam but it's a bit hard to tell from the photo.

I end up making some pretty odd things with the laser and these 'Bump & Grind' knuckle dusters rate pretty highly. It's LARP related (obviously) so they're made of foam to be soft enough to wear. They still need latexing and they're probably too small for anyone with sensible sized hands but the joy of the laser is that you can scale things up easily.

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.

Eldritch thought the pattern from my box lid would go rather well as a shield embellishment. I had to modify it slightly engraving away some of the inner patches and drawing the rest as line art but I think they're going to come out really nice when painted and latexed.

The postman arrived this morning with a long slim parcel, I didn't remember ordering anything of that shape and there was no indication of sender on the outside. The parcel turned out to be a LARP safe oar, all ready for painting and latexing. Just a typical day really when objects like these turn up with no prior warning, next step is to email Eldritch and ask if it came from them. Yep, it needs to say "That's a paddlin'!" on the side in a hand carved font. 20 minutes later it's ready to be sent back again, maybe I'll ask the postman to hang around next time.

I completely redid the cupboard door for Eldritch , I've been building up with various testing recently  and it culminated in this simple design. Doing these simple outlines as a normal engrave would take 2 hours, doing this engraving as a series of lines took 20 minutes as a 'faux' engrave, unfocusing the laser to get a nice wide beam reduced the time to just 5 minutes. A fairly significant improvement. It has limited uses but it's nice to experiment and know exactly what is possible, you'll never know when you need it.

One for the runescape fans, Eldritch has recreated the Shield of Arrav . The inner pattern is a straight forward engrave but we wanted the inner line to be a different depth to the outer lines. This is why I was experimenting with engraving at different depths . If I had to engrave the whole shape a second time it would have doubled the cutting time and taken forever. This way added just a few more seconds to the cut. The laser didn't get all the way through the 22mm outer, I freed it up with a knife to take a better picture.   This project was done for Jagex  and had a non disclosure agreement attached to it which is no big deal for me, and has the added advantage that the project is now finished and I can show you completed shields covered in latex and painted.

The last of the 200mm signs is this little Disabled sign. I'm not yet sure if these are going to be defensive or offensive items but either way it'll be fun to see them in action. While I was cutting I also had a repeat order of the larger sign post shields . Now I just need to recut the cupboard door shield but I'll be using the alternate engraving technique for that.  

These signs are found in various places around the country and indicate that there is a fire hydrant nearby, they are yellow with a black 'H' in the middle. The figure at the top is the size of the main that feeds that hydrant in millimetres. The lower figure is the distance from that plaque to where the hydrant is in metres.  I engraved the slots into the corners where the plaque would normally be fixed and I even made some slotted screw heads from 8mm material to make it look like it is screwed down (actually in hindsight this may be wrong, stay tuned)

Eldritch is doing a range of post apocalyptic weapons so I've been getting all sorts of requests for odd signs and things. They all make great blog fodder. This is cut into 16mm plastazote foam.

Based upon the Herugrim sword guard I drew previously, this one is much smaller and has the horses pointing outwards. It will form the guard for a LARP dagger which is why I cut 2 and they get doubled up to show the engraving on both sides.

Engraving can be tediously slow, especially when you want to do the edge of a large area but not fill in the middle. It's something I covered before when I carved the cupboard door shields . I previously drew a dozen different lines to simulate the engraving effect, it was faster than the engrave but still a little bit slow. This time I thought I would try defocusing the laser beam to get a nice wide engrave, then the groove can be cut in a single pass which would be a lot faster.  I ran these test pieces at differing heights under the laser (the mm distance is height below the focal point. The results were quite effective and with a bit of tweaking it will do the job nicely. The first thing to note is that the corners cut a lot deeper than the straight sections. This is a known issue and Lasercut specifically has a setting for it. I found that reducing the corner power to around half of the main power solved most of these issues.  The other issue is the s...

Some LARP groups have fancy symbols, others have very simple ones. These 3 diamonds are about as simple as they come but I'm sure they'll be very effective on the front of a shield. Here are some pictures of other laser cut bits once they've been painted and latexed and turned into proper weapons/shields.

Another phoenix design, this one is is far more detailed around the tail so I'm surprised it came out ok. The laser seems to be coping really well on these intricate foam designs and I'm not even using the vacuum bed .  

Another foam shield emblem, I got the impression the lion in the crown was taken from somewhere and the antlers added after, the antlers were a little thin and flimsy after cutting. ( svg here )