Category Archives: wood

Lasers + Whisky = Delightful Wedding Gift

Posted on by KevinB

One of our members got married yesterday, and I crafted a fine gift for him and his wife at the Makerspace.  The happy couple enjoys whisky, and I thought that providing a tour might be a nice idea.  The tour starts at inexpensive bourbon, moves through wheated whiskies, and on to rye. The tour continues in Scotland with some easy to enjoy Sherry cask finish bottlings, and then moves on to rare, Islay and finally mature bottlings (25 Year old Talisker!).

I found some old mohogany baseboard that had some aging varnish on one side and some old caulking on another.  After cutting two 18″ long sections, a few minutes of belt-sanding had them looking great.  I used a 1 1/4″ Forstner drill bit to bore 0.3″ deep pockets for the bottles to fit in.  I used one of our two laser cutters to etch the name/age/proof of each of the whisky sample on top, plus a congratulatory message on the reverse side.  To bring out the rich orangy-red mahogany color, I wiped on Beeswax / Mineral Oil .  Check it out close up, while imagining the symbolism of things getting better with age!

Nerdy Derby Car From The Future

Posted on by KevinB

I made the car “Sling Shot” to enter in the 2012 Milwaukee “Nerdy Derby” at Barcamp7 this weekend.  A lot of people were talking about adding motors and fancy electronics, but my car is powered by a spring – a 10 foot length of surgical tubing that is stretched to another block of wood that must be clamped down.  I added wheels, but they aren’t necessary – they don’t actually even touch the track.

Check out what may end up being the only two runs the car has.  Fortunately, JRock captured some video of them.  I’d estimate that the car took 0.1 or 0.2 seconds to travel the 40 foot length of the race track, giving an average speed of 300 feet per second (200 mph!).  The great part about this “sling shot” design is that the car is accelerated by the surgical tubing spring throughout the first 30 feet of the track – until the surgical tubing is completely unstretched.  “Beautiful!”

 

60 Watts of Lazzor Power!

Posted on by Pete Prodoehl

Laser Training

Last week we got the 60 watt laser cutter “officially” online and working. We even got a bunch of people trained on using it. There’s still an issue with homing, but if you follow the instructions, it works fine.

And by “works fine” I mean it “works great!”

I ended up cutting my Nerdy Derby car last week, and I also did this laser-etched coaster, which is about 3.75″ in diameter and 3mm thick. There was a little bit of scorching at the bottom, but I may be able to sand that off easily. I was still playing with the cutting settings a bit. I may also play with the masking tape idea to prevent scorching the surface when cutting.

Laser Etched and Cut

The artwork for the coaster is a mathematician from a NASA coloring book, and I found it on OpenClipArt.org which is a great source for public domain vector-based artwork.

(Oh, we also ended up connecting the PC that was on the 25 watt laser cutter (which is down for maintenance) because it’s got a newer version of CorelDraw.)