MSRaynsford

In a slightly strange obsession I've developed I've started trying to cut some edible materials. I've cut gingerbread in the past and it works ok but it's a bit stinky. This was a sugar cookie recipe I tried. As you can probably see immediately there was a big crack appearing on the surface before I even started cutting. The laser seemed to go through it easily and a lot of smoke came out from underneath, a sure sign it cut all the way through, turns out it hadn't though. When I eventually broke the shape out there appears to be a seam running across the middle of the biscuit too which made it snap in half that way. A bit of a failure all round and it was still stinky and didn't taste very nice so time to move onto the next recipe.

While making samples for the vanillabox I was keen to experiment with new/cheap materials. I modelled this vase in 3D and sliced it with 123D make (which now appears to have gone), I cut each layer in corrugated card. I actually started life as a lampshade but it didn't let enough light through so when it was flipped upside down I realised it would make a nice vase. The petals for the flowers were all cut from crepe paper using a very low power so as to minimise the burning around the edges. The petals were wrapped with floral tape and wire to create the flower shapes. At the maker faire we had to label the item because people didn't realise the flowers were laser cut.

Slate is one of the materials that I knew could be laser engraved but I just never got round to doing it (I've had some slate coasters for years but we have a functional old table and don't use coasters). So when I was asked to do a house sign I jumped at the chance. It's a simple design but it came up lovely. I even marked where the holes should drilled (but decided not to drill it myself). The best thing is that I was sent 2 pieces of slate in case of accident and I got it right first time so now I have my own piece to play with (or leave on the shelf for years with the coasters).

Dominic and I just attended the first Kitronik Teacher Evening  to help demonstrate laser cutting and laser cut stuff. I was looking for some cheap materials I could have for a sampler and I remember seeing that you can laser etch onto denim. A sacrificial pair of jeans and 10 minutes later I had etched this pattern onto the surface of the material. It's quite impressive how much colour contrast you end up getting.

These large stencils are cut from 350 micron mylar. A friend asked if I could cut some stencils and I just happened to be visiting Bee Crafty  on Monday who gave me some really useful advice about what I needed and how fast to cut it. The mylar cuts really well and if you keep the power sufficiently low you can avoid the burn reflections on the reverse.

In hindsight this is one of the vaguest posts I've ever written. The Centre for life asked me to laser cut some fabric for them on a laser that was bigger than theirs. I'm not sure what material it is, how much it cost or what it's being used for, but it did laser cut and the edges of the cut fused together so there was no fraying. Yay lasers.

While cutting Sams new oak leaf design I decided it would be worth trying on Kitronik's Oak veneered MDF material . Real wood veneers are really nice to cut and these designs look great in real wood.

It's Christmas and I know it is possible to laser cut gingerbread so I thought I might as well give it a try. Eli and I made a batch from the BBC recipe  and he rolled it all flat using some 6mm ply as guides for the rolling pin. The bread expanded to 10mm thick and I drew some shapes for the laser. We went really slowly 2 passes at 10mm/s @ 80W and on the second pass could see smoke coming out the honeycomb so knew it had cut through. We were left with this intricate snowflake 10cm across and a rather nice negative of it too. ( svg here )

I was asked if it was possible to engrave Wax candles in the laser. So I grabbed a pillar candle from the nearest shop and whacked it under the laser using the rotary attachment. We gave it several attempts slowly turning up the power and down the speed and the answer is 'No' wax just melts and bubbles away without really engraving. I'm sure if we have a silver or gold candle, those are only coloured on the top few layers and you could probably cut that away but plain colour candles don't work.

Just Add Sharks  gets a lot of new material requests, the result is usually the same, send us some material and we'll try it. So this weeks new material is Nacre , better known as Mother of Pearl. Like leather it makes quite a smell while cutting but I was able to get through 1.5mm relatively easily. I think it's going to be used for guitar inserts.

A ye olde board game board for a game called Gluckhaus , this was cut on request for a LRP game . The material is an oak veneered plywood that is now available from Kitronik , it worked really well for this. There are a few knots and lumps and bumps that are a bit tougher to get through but as I'm only going to be making one of these that's fine. 

I had a very spur of the moment visit today by Paul from Rideworks . He wanted to know if our machines were capable of engraving his anodised aluminium parts so the best way to find out was to try it. We played around with a few different speeds and settings and we even cut an impromptu jig to align the parts perfectly. The test results are great, in fact the hardest part of the process was the moving of files between our aging laptops.

Last night at Chaosdorf we cut a few little samples to see what would work on the laser cutter. This bottle top was a fantastic success. I'm expecting some awesome things when they start engraving their own logos on to the bottle tops for their home brew (and now I'm home again I'm relaxing and thoroughly enjoying one of the bottles we bought home with us)

Tonight I'm in Germany and more specifically Düsseldorf where we're visiting the Chaosdorf Hackspace . We have just installed a Greyfin laser cutter  and they decided to engrave the hackspace logo onto the top of an old IBM thinkpad. They've picked up the software pretty quickly, imported their design and with a few gentle nudges have etched this logo onto the lid of the laptop. After a bit of a cleaning scrub it came out really nicely.  It'll be a fun night here at their social evening and then back to the UK for Dominic and I tomorrow.

It's a bit of a work in progress but I've started to list the places that I buy my materials from. I get asked a lot about the poplar wood ply and I guess a blog post is only relevant for a week before it disappears off the bottom of the page (much like this will). So you'll note the new materials  page in the header which will take you to the ever changing/growing list of materials I'm working with. I'm actually still looking for laserable bamboo if anyone knows where to get some

I'm always happy to try new materials that people send me to see if they can be engraved and this time it was the turn of Quartz crystals. Slate, Sandstone and Marble all engrave so there was always a chance this could work and as you can see from the image it wasn't a complete failure but the quartz was chipping away under the laser beams so it makes for some very rough edges to the engrave. It's not good enough to warrant doing again but at least it has been tried now.