MSRaynsford

I wrote an instructable last night which rounds up a lot of my board gaming type posts. http://www.instructables.com/id/Laser-Cut-Board-Games/ It was also supposed to inspire people to support my jumpstart campaign for Carcassonne files so consider this a gentle nudge for my blog readers too http://msraynsford.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/kickstart-me-carcassonne.html

I'm often asked to offer comparison between laser cutters 'X' and 'Y'. I feel it's important to try and offer impartial advice, we do have our own laser importing business after all so it would be very easy to be biased. The trouble is that I'm not sure what people are really asking when they want two machines compared so I thought I'd write a little blog post to talk about the basic comparison and discuss the most important thing that people always overlook. Laser cutters are often presented alongside a pretty dull technical spec sheet. This is straight forward list of details about laser power, cutting area and cutting speeds, sometimes it also includes price. I would hope that most people are able to do these comparisons for themselves. Bigger cutting area is better, more laser power is better and often comes at an increased price.  This is where the question confuses me. The only information I have about the other laser cutter is this d...

Image tolen from the interwebz because I forgot this blog post was scheduled but not completed 3 years ago today I posted my very first Laser Cut Item , a simple card for Kim . I had bought the laser cutter a few weeks earlier and I had decided to embark upon a crazy project to laser cut 365 things in 365 days . Now 3 years on, I've complete the 365 things , the 52 things , made a job from my hobby  and started a laser import company that is really taking off. Who knows what I'll be doing this time next year but I can tell you, I'm working on some big projects at the moment. I should be displaying more of the parts for you and I can't wait for this first one to be finished because there will be some awesome pictures. I'm also working on open source controllers for laser cutters and some other nifty little tricks you can do with our lasers so it looks like it's going to be another fun year.

Another quick turn around part for this upcoming cake project. You'll have to trust me that there are laser cut parts in there. I used an arduino to drive the 3 servos; head, tail and foot. Power comes from a small 5V brick and it's connected directly to the mains. Believe it or not this will get covered in icing and become a 'cake', for now it's been sent off to the wizards so they can work their magic.

This massive cake stand (1200 long) is a small part of the new project I'm working on. I can't give too many details yet but I just built 20 of these sections all of which will be stacked with cake in the near future. Stay tuned because this project is awesome and huge.

It's not just about the things you can make with a laser cutter, the laser can also help you make things to make other things. I've been making these internet boxes  for quite some time now, each one has a hole in the top and two holes in the side. I've been drilling them by eye for far too long so I finally got round to building a jig to hold the boxes in the right place for me. The vertical slot lines it up to drill a hole in the top. The horizontal slot is larger than the side of the box, pushing it to the top lines up one hole, pulling it down to the bottom allows the second hole to be placed just above it.

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)