Archive June, 2012

More Fun With Lasers

03 June, 16:24, by Alex Storey

So my second serious project for the Laser Cutter was to create Acrylic cases for a number of loose collector coins I’ve accumulated over time.

I started by creating my layouts in InkScape and saving them to DXF format which the LaserCut software will import.

The basic pattern is three (3) layers of 2mm Acrylic sandwiched together. All three layers have the same overall dimensions and the bolt holes in the corners are aligned. The center layer has one (1) or more cutouts for the coin(s).

I was lucky enough that all of the coins I wanted to enclose in this way were 2mm or less in thickness meaning that they would fit within one layer of the Acrylic. Thicker coins might require multiple layers or thicker Acrylic.

Custom cut Acrylic coin holders.

Playing With The Laser Cutter

03 June, 16:06, by Alex Storey Tags: ,

So I tried out my first serious project with the laser cutter after several trial runs to figure out how it works.
I downloaded the Spiderasaur schematics from Thingiverse ’cause I thought it looked kind of cool.
Ultimately I want to do one in Acrylic but for a start I just did one in 1/8″ hardboard as a proof of concept.
I had to do a little bit of sanding to get the abdominal sections to fit without binding but it otherwise fit together
very snugly.

I may try modifying the original schematic to extent the abdomen and space out the sections more to eliminate the binding.