MSRaynsford

Over at Just Add Sharks we're building our own laser cutter and that means design revisions and multiple prototypes. I'm sure you all saw our previous version  built over the course of a weekend and intended to test several design choices, such as the gantry mounted tube and the grbl / visicut software combination. We threw together an acrylic box full of interesting curves and features but when I got it home it felt very impractical. The curve on the lid was pretty wonky and I felt we needed to go back to the drawing board to design something we could actually build in quantity. With two weeks to go till the maker faire and a broken laser  it was a pretty big task, but I'm very happy with this new revision. The first significant change was to rebuild the gantry, the previous build used a large box section but that was replaced with a single sheet, the rail gives it strength and the stepper and drive belt can be fixed to it with minimal change. The laser tube moun...

With most tournaments the last place person gets the wooden spoon prize, 'Insert Funny Name Here 3' is no exception so I duly engraved the inside of a spoon again. I was impressed by how well the laser coped with the curved surface. They posted some tournament pictures on their twitter

Last week I ran some more trophies up for a guild ball tournament. The ' Who Cares Who Wins ' podcast guys ran their 'Insert Funny Name Here 3' tournament and wanted trophies for all the various prize places. I squeezed them in shortly after I fixed my laser and have held them off until now partly because I forgot about them.

I had a few projects based around this sea bass test rig and the keen eyed amongst you may have noticed that this is actually sea bass 2. This time I needed some limit switches, this is to test the homing functions and software limits available in GRBL 0.9j. I set it up so that both switches are fixed on the framework (rather than x moving on the axis), this means I have to Home the Y axis before the X axis but it works pretty reliably.

I needed a quick and dirty flux capacitor prop so I threw one together from laser cut parts. There are 4 LED's under each arm of the Y shape and they're connected to a Digispark  board to make them flash. The whole thing runs on battery power. If I had more time and inclination I'd weather the paint effects slightly, round some of the corners off on the wires and recut the top panel but for now I'm pleased with the effect. ( svg here )

After doing all those funny materials for the sample wall last week I guess my extractor fan must be clogged, smoke started creeping out the front of the machine and I realised how full the cutter was. I decided to plough on because I needed to get the jobs finished so I opened the lid, bypassed the switch and opened the garage door. This was the vast plume of smoke that came off one of my useless machine kits. So yeah, these things make a lot of smoke and some of it ultimately creeps out when you open the lid. More pics to follow when I get to the route of the problem.

Inspired by their foray into laser cutting Team Rembandts  came back later in the afternoon to get some more cutting done. This time they decided to cut their logo into the lid of the PC case and insert orange plastic into the gaps. The panel was made from ABS plastic and we only had one shot at it, I overcooked it slightly but the final panel still came out really well. This may also be the last shot of my wooden bowl as I forgot to collect it back from them at the end of the day, no big deal I'm sure it would have been firewood in a few months time.