Setting up my LASER cutter/engraver

[James_B]

It's been a while since we moved from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia, and one of the tools that I haven't had time or space to set up was my Universal Laser Systems VLS 4.60 LASER cutter/engraver.

In Newfoundland, it was easy. When it was delivered, it was unloaded from the truck and went straight into the garage. I just unpacked it, bolted on the legs, fitted the casters, and rolled it into a corner of the garage.







To give you an idea of size, the engraver is 36" wide, 36" deep, stands 39" tall, and weighs around 270 lbs.



Before winter arrived, I mounted a baseboard heater on the wall behind the laser cabinet as the LASER tube life expectancy between rebuilds is reduced if the o-ring seals get too cold.

Here's what the interchangeable LASER assembly looks like. They're avilable in power output levels from 10 to 75 watts. The 10 to 30 watt models are smaller and will fit into a desktop size engraver, but the bigger tubes need to go into what ULS refers to as a Platform LASER.





Inside my LASER assembly is an air cooled 50 watt (minimum) carbon dioxide LASER tube, and the larger units (like mine) have a high 4 figure price tag.

A necessary part of the installation is some sort of air extraction system that will flow at least 250 cfm and will maintain 6 inches of vacuum in the cabinet. Smaller units can use an charcoal filtered extraction system, but it's far cheaper to use an off the shelf "dust collection" style blower that's ducted outside. In my case I had a 650 cfm extraction blower that connected via flexible ducting to a vent I mounted in a panel of the garage door.

Other than the cold, the only problem I had with it set up in the garage was the one time I managed to get dust on the optics while doing carpentry work for the house renovation ... and when the LASER was next fired up, that dust caused a $600 failure of the penny sized final focus lens. Something that I don't plan to repeat.





The only other failure I've experienced is the failure of a tiny magnet in the "door interlock" switches. An identical replacement magnet assembly cost me less than $4.

After 3 years of use, it was all packed back in its crate for the move to Nova Scotia.

 

[James_B]

In the place we bought in Nova Scotia, the attached garage was totally unsuitable as it was too open to the elements, and too dusty for safe operation of precision optics. The unattached garage was even worse (I have seen it snowing inside that garage during a blizzard), and there was no power in that building.

The long term plan was to build a workshop for my toys/tools, but this wasn't going to happen until our financial situation improved. In the mean time, I had nowhere to set up the LASER, and other than opening the shipping crate (in which it did its initial move from Scottsdale, Arizona to Toronto and then on to Newfoundland and then the move from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia) to make sure it was OK, so that any temperature sensitive components could be moved into the house, it stayed in its crate and sat out our first winter in Nova Scotia in an unheated unattached garage.

Late last year, we decided that as the front door had not been opened for over a year (all our visitors use the far more convenient side door that opens into the kitchen), then there was an unused area in the front hall that was perfect for the LASER to be installed.

Problem number one. Getting the LASER engraver into the house. It's a fragile piece of precision equipment that weighs over 250 lbs, and it has to go up 4 steps, and pass through 4 doorways that are narrower than the solid steel cabinet. The last heavy item we had lifted up those 4 steps was a cast iton kitchen stove, and we used the neighbour's tractor with a fork lift fitting. We nearly lost the stove when it started to slip during the lift, as the modifications the neighbour had made to the forks for handling logs meant that it was too wide to get both forks between the banisters on either side of the stairs, so it was lifted up while balancing on one fork. Not doing that again.

In the end, I devised a method where I could brute force the LASER up the stairs while strapped onto a mover's cart. It was strapped on its side, so I could manoever it through the doorways.

Problem number two. The 100 year old house doesn't have very level floors, and rennovations done 30-40 years ago fitted new walls without leveling the floor first. The unlevel floor will have to be dealt with.

Part of the LASER's set up is leveling the cutting platform, so there is a small amount of adjustment in the mounts for the 4 oversized casters. The corner of the room where the engraver was being installed had a 3/4" variation in level from the position of the back right caster to the position of the front left caster. The rear right caster is wound in as far as it will go and the front left caster is wound out as far as it can go, and it's just level, but I'm not happy with the thread engagement of the front left caster. I will make some blocks to securely hold the wheels in position and re-do the leveling in the future.



Problem number three. I need to duct the exhaust out of the room. That's easy, just fit a vent into one of the windows. Unfortunately, Winter came early, and I also discovered that the all the single hung windows in the room weren't going to open with out some serious work. The previous owners nailed them shut, and countless coats of paint had sealed them up properly, so that part of the project will have to wait for better weather. Everything went on hold until Spring.

Spring has arrived, so on the weekend, I freed up the windows, and made a panel that would fit in the bottom of one of the smaller windows.



I'm not worrying about elegance, as it's only planned to be a temporary installation.

A 4" flexible duct connects the port exhaust on the LASER cabinet and the 650 cfm blower, and then via a 5" flexible duct to the window vent.



Once initial testing is over and I'm happy with the location of the LASER cabinet, I'll add some rigid ducting and relocate the blower into a more convenient location.

I also fitted a new power outlet with it's own circuit breaker, as the old outlet in the wall was the old a 2 pin ungrounded style, and the cable to it had no ground wire.



The next stage, is inspection and cleaning of all the optics, precision leveling, calibrating, and testing. I've done some initial testing, and so far all I've done is replaced a 9V lithium battery and downloaded and installed the latest driver software onto my computer.

To the computer, the LASER looks like a large flat bed printer/plotter that can draw on a 24" wide by 18 inch high piece of paper. Selecting different colour inks tells the laser to do different things.

Other than the belts, maybe some bearings, and the LASER tube, there's really nothing to wear out, although as I discovered, the lenses can pay the price if you don't keep everything clean.

The LASER tube has a 4-7 year life expectency, that decreases if it gets too cold, and the life expectancy is actually improved if you use it a lot.

Hopefully the CO2 charge hasn't leaked out of my LASER tube, or it's a $1200 plus freight charge to have it refurbished at the factory in Arizona.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Thanks for posting James, a very interesting thread.
I have just checked out you web site as well, nicely done.

Subscribed.

Cheers

 

[James_B]

To be honest, I bought it as a cool toy.

I figured that after the couple of posts I made in the It's a freakin' LASER beam! (Laser engraver / cutter) post, I really should post some details of my rig.

If the LASER fires up after it's 18 month slumber, I have a pile of projects to get on to.

 

[James_B]

It lives!

I did a couple of very low power runs to cut some squares out of some printer paper, after some very quick and dirty focus settings. That worked, so it was time to test the whole system.

In went the rotary adapter, and a few more "not exactly perfect" focus and zero point settings were done, and it was time for a full power run.

The end result was this:



I can see a few flaws that are typical of a slightly incorrect focus of the 2.0 inch focal length, final lens, but it looks like its going to be good once I fine tune all the zero points to set the focus perfectly. The good news is that the LASER tube is still producing a serious amount of power.

 

[James_B]

Over the past few days, I've been tinkering with the Rotary Adapter.



The Rotary Adapter sits inside the working space of the LASER, and is designed to allow items of up to 8" in diameter to be rotated while the laser etches them. The items are held between a rubber faced cone and a rubber faced inverted cone. The cone on the right is controlled by a stepper motor which rotates the item by a precise amount for each pass of the LASER optical head assembly (the small black box with the 2.0 on it). The inverted cone on the left has a free wheeling bearing and can be adjusted to accommodate items that are up to about 16 inches long.

As I mentioned in my previous post, last week, I did a quick and dirty set up of it so I could quickly test the LASER systems after the LASER sat unused for 18 months.

Due to the "not exactly precise" focus and positioning settings, and a loose locking mechanism on the movable left section of the mount, the engraved results were pretty nasty.

On Sunday, I took the Rotary Adapter apart and tightened up all the fittings, and yesterday I spent some time fine tuning the LASER set up, and now the focus and positioning is set up correctly. This piece came out nice.



Comparing the results with the earlier test are chalk and cheese, with the glass on the left showing the typical chipping that results from a slightly misaligned optical system. Just a few millimeters of focus/positioning error and the output turns to ****, and glassware is more susceptible to these kind of errors, so it makes a good test subject.



It's time to do some work for paying customers.

 

[James_B]

I had a lot of successful runs today, so I think we can call it good.

Did a number of glasses without failure.



Designed and cut a new back cover gasket from some sheet silicon (cheap silicon baking sheet) for my 1976 vintage Omega watch. Replacement gaskets for this limited production/rare model (just 10,000 made) are unobtainable. Here's a Canadian dime on top of the first trial run (didn't quite have the LASER power set high enough to cut all the way through). The second one I cut using 2 passes, and it is already in the watch.



We bought a stack of the cheap silicon baking sheets when our local grocery store was selling them off cheap (50 cents each). With the success of the trial cut on some offcuts, I'll shortly be creating some custom sized/shaped mats to exactly fit some of my wife's cake pans.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Awesome work with setting up the Laser, James.
The possibilities seem endless in terms of what you can do with it, well done.

 

[James_B]

It's good to have the machine back in operation after 12 months in storage, and 6 months waiting for better weather to get the ducting done..

 

[ToddG]

My wife worked for a company that made rubber stamps. They used the same type of machine from the same company. Fascinating to watch!

One day a swarm of bees came down the exhaust and wouldn't leave. She put in a fairly complex engraving program that sliced the bees to bits....

 

[lbgradwell]

Have you considered mounting it to the head of a shark?

Nice work James...

 

[James_B]

Here's the LASER engraving a design into a whisky glass mounted in the rotary adapter.

The black object with the "2.0" on it is the 2 inch focal length lens assembly that travels back and forth like a printer head.

The invisible LASER beam enters the lens assembly through a port at the top left of the assembly, bounces off a few internal mirrors, passes through a number of lenses. and comes out of the bottom of this lens assembly as a tightly focused beam.

To give you an idea of scale, the whiskey glass is about 85mm high by 80mm diameter, and the lens is around 45-50 mm from the surface of the glass.

The head moves at quite a speed, so it was a case of doing a 1/12 second exposure to get the flames and then and then the flash would fire. There's some motion blurring of the head due to the 1/12 second exposure. Took about 30 shots to get this one (had lots of shots of the flames but the lens assembly was nowhere near them). Apart from cropping, there's no digital manipulation. What you see is what it looks like.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Absolutely fascinating, thanks for posting James..

 

[James_B]

OK, for those that are interested, here's how the system is set up.

Step 1: Adjust the 4 casters so that the internal cutting platform is level.

This can be done the easy way or the hard way.

The easy way is to use a straight edge level on the flat section of the heavy gauge steel feet and level it up that way, or place a bull's eye level or straight edge level on the cutting platform. From here, you adjust the casters for to level the platform for both front/rear and left/right directions.

The hard way is to do precision measurements between the optical head and the cutting platform, at each of the corners of the platform. For each measurement, you've got to move the cutting head on the X/Y rails. You keep adjusting the casters and re-measuring the distances until there's no difference. I did this the first time, as this was the process specified in the manual. They have since added the simpler process using a level. Believe me, a bull's eye level in the middle of the cutting platform is a lot simpler.

Here's how the caster adjustments turned out.



You can see from the above shots of the 4 casters, just how unlevel the floors are in our 100+ year old farm house. There's a good 18mm / 3/4" difference between height adjusting thread position for the left front and right rear casters. The thread for the left front caster is barely engaged, so I'll be adding a block under this caster.

Step 2: Set the zero focus point for each final focus lens for each cutting surface.

This done using a "System" tab in the LASER's control/driver software. Here's a screen grab (which can be clicked for full resolution).



There are 5 different lens options and currently 4 different cutting/engraving surfaces, so if you have all the options, there's 20 different zero points to do.

The "calibrate" function under the 5 lens size check boxes (in the middle of the above screen grab sets the zero height reference (Z-Axis) of the bare cutting platform. The bare cutting platform is a 1/4" thick slab of flat machined aluminium, and if you don't order any options, then this is all you have.

The zero height point is set with a little measuring jig that comes with each lens. You just run the platform up and down until the jig is tight between the lens assembly and the cutting platform. At which point there's an "accept" button to click which stores this point.

I have both the downdraft "Cutting Table" and the "Rotary" options, so these have to be done as well.

The system detects what option is fitted (the "Cutting Table" is sensed by a reed switch under the bare cutting platform and the "Rotary" is detected when you plug in its cable), and the associated buttons are greyed out if the device isn't sensed. In the above screen grab, I had the "Rotary" plugged in.

It's the same process to Zero each of these accessories. The downdraft cutting table is exactly the same process as the bare platform, but the "Rotary" requires the Y-axis to be set to 66.7mm and the X axis set so the red Class 3a positioning laser is shining on the movable free wheeling left hand hub of the rotary adapter. The Zero point is measured from the lens assembly to the top of the hub, and from this, the system computes the centre line of the rotary.

Once that's done, you're pretty much ready to run.

There's some beam alignment procedures to ensure that the LASER beam hits just the right point on the cutting surface, but I rarely have to do that.

A lot of the buttons that are on the screen have been added in the past 5 years, and weren't deemed necessary when I first set up my machine in 2009.

 

[1/2 Cup]

James,
Are the casters going to settle into the carpet over time and/or do you have to check the level of the unit after each use?

Have you thought of adjustable level feet or do you need the mobility?

It looks to be a fairly easy to use calibration procedure but if you are like me you dont read the manual until the last resort.

Cheers

 

[James_B]

The whole setup really is simple once you've done it a few times. I got a lot of practice with the zero point settings as there have been a number of driver software upgrades, and quite a few of those have clobbered the saved settings.

I have learned the hard way to remove the rotary adapter or the air downdraft table and check things after each upgrade. The rotary adapter sits quite a bit higher than the platform, and when the platform is fully raised, the top of the rotary assembly ends up much higher than the optical head and the X-axis track. I had a near disaster after one major software update when the rotary decided it had to go up a long way to return to its (incorrect) zero point, and attempted to remove the lens assembly from the X-axis track. One corner of the cover over the rotary's stepper motor actually popped the lens out of its mount, and I had to glue the lens back into the mount. Fortunately the only damage to the lens was on the edge and out of the beam path.

The carpet is a problem. In Newfoundland, it sat on concrete in the garage, and there was certainly less worry about settling. Fortunately, now that I use the level, it's a simple process to do a weekly check and fine tune.

I really can't afford to loose the mobility of the casters, as there are a few things I need to occasionally access around the back. That being said, as we plan to remove the carpet and refinish the wide plank floors in the future, there is a distinct possibility that I might loose the carpet directly underneath the LASER engraver.

 

[tony302coupe]

Wow James,
That’s a very cool looking laser .Is that what they call a yag laser? About 16 years ago I use to operate and program lasers in the metal manufacturing & Sign industry’s in Melbourne.The lasers have got more compact over the years. You got off cheap with the price of the lens, We were paying about $1200au for a 5” focal lens $1700au for the 7.5” focal lens .
Anyhow that looks cool, Will we be seeing any GJ glasses anytime soon!!
Cheer,
Tony

 

[chadster1]

Does yours do 3d engraving?

 

[chadster1]

Here is my setup

 

[James_B]

Wow James,
That’s a very cool looking laser .Is that what they call a yag laser?

My system is a 10.6 μm wavelength CO2 LASER. These are the most common and have a CO2 gas filled tube that is either energized by a high voltage discharge (like most of the cheap Chinese LASERs) or a radio frequency signal (like most of the US made systems). Their energy is in the far infra-red area of the spectrum, and tends to work best marking/cutting organic materials (wood, plastic, paper, etc).

The YAG systems, more correctly called Nd:YAG (neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet), the Nd:YVO (neodymium-doped yttrium ortho-vanadate) systems, and the Fiber LASERS are solid state systems that have a yttrium crystal or neodymium-doped glass fiber array that's usually energized by a smaller solid state LASER pump diode. The yttrium systems have a near infrared 1064 nm beam that is exactly double the wavelength of the 532 nm beam from green LASER pointers. Green pointers use the same yttrium compounds as their LASERing material, but use some trickery to produce a frequency doubled/half wavelength output. Some green pointers filter out any stray 1064 nm infra red energy, but the cheap ones do not. The neodymium-doped glass fiber LASERs have a slightly different wavelength of 1062 nm. Both are called 1.06 micron LASERs by the manufacturers. The YAG/YVO/Fiber beam produces a much more focused heat spot, and they are better at marking metals. The solid state LASERs closely resemble the technology used in the original 694.3 nm ruby LASER developed in 1960.

About 16 years ago I use to operate and program lasers in the metal manufacturing & Sign industry’s in Melbourne.The lasers have got more compact over the years. You got off cheap with the price of the lens, We were paying about $1200au for a 5” focal lens $1700au for the 7.5” focal lens .

Standard genuine replacement lenses for my system are around $600 each through the Canadian distributors, but that's just the lens glued into a small mounting frame. I can get the same genuine part from a supplier in the US for less than half that. At one point, I could get a non-genuine bare lens that I would have to glue into my own frame for half that again.

The entire front of the head comes off (three screws) and in most cases, there's just a lens and a front silvered mirror attached to the front plate. The usual method of doing a focal length change, is buying a new front plate, complete with a different focal length lens, that you just screw in in place of your original lens. At some point in the future I may buy a 4" front plate assembly.

There's also a HPDFO (High Power Density Focusing Optics) plate assembly that has a much more complicated optical path with multiple mirrors and lenses that achieves a much tighter focus. Part of the HPDFO package is a collimation lens that replaces the flat glass beam window that isolates the dirty working cavity at the front from the LASER at the back. The HPDFO lens assembly plus the collimation lens provide about a 20% boost in LASER etch/cut ability. It's exactly the same 2" focal length as my standard lens, but the tighter focus also means that it's less tolerant of focusing errors. I was advised by the distributors to stick with the standard 2" lens but to get the collimation lens factory installed as that will give me about a 10% boost in the effective power without the more critical focus of the HPDFO lens head. It also meant that if I ever decide to buy a HPDFO lens head in the future, then it's just a user bolt in and I don't have to worry about getting the collimation lens assembly fitted.

Anyhow that looks cool, Will we be seeing any GJ glasses anytime soon!!
Cheer,
Tony

It's a great toy.

I have considered doing some GJ stuff in the future, but I need to talk to the site owners first.

At the moment, I've had to put my Craftsman and Plomb projects on hold while I work on some sample pieces for a couple of potential clients.

 

[James_B]

Does yours do 3d engraving?

The ULS system will do 3D engraving (although some people refer to it as 2.5D engraving) using 16 levels of grey in the image to determine the depth.

There's a 16 step 3D power mode calibration screen in the driver software.



I've had my machine for almost 5 years, and so far I've not even tried 3D printing. I tend to do more glassware than anything else.

I will certainly be trying it in the future, but not until I get my air assist operational again. My 18 cfm compressor still hasn't been reinstalled since our move from Newfoundland, and as the compressor needs between 20A and 30A, it won't be wired in until we get the power service upped from its current 100A to at least a 200A service.

 

[1/2 Cup]

James,

At work we have long had need to engrave switchboard and equipment labels and have traditionally out sourced this work which can be a real pain at times,

After a long period of putting together a business case to justify the capital outlay my management have finally relented and yesterday we had a demo on one of these units.

http://www.gravograph.com/australia/engraving-machines/laser-ls100.php


Very impressive I must say, easy to use and set up and knocks out a quality product.

Have you had any experience with these units??

Regards...

 

[James_B]

No experience at all with that brand. All my experience has been with the Universal Laser System machines.

From what I understand, the GravoGraph line is from China, and there seems to be some bitching on forums about the software. Ask if you need to use proprietary software, or if something like CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator can be used.

As it's from China, I'd also be asking about LASER tube life and replacement/refurbishment costs. I've heard a few horror stories about the Chinese getting more power out of their high voltage discharge tube type LASERs by winding up the power at the cost of a much shorter life expectancy, and the unavailability of replacement tubes just a couple of years down the track.

The equivalent from ULS would be something like the entry level desktop VLS2.30, but because of size issues, the VLS2.30 is limited to 10-30W LASER tubes. To get more power, you'd need the bigger desktop unit or the platform units. However, the ULS machine will probably be 3+ times the price of the Chinese machine.

It may pay to ask a few questions on places like Sawmill Creek's Engraver Forum area
.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Many thanks for your reply and comments James, we will investigate those issues further..

 

[James_B]

I've pretty much got my LASER system dialed in, so I figured it was time to push my services locally.

Last week, there was an article in a local beer blog about a new "Craft Brewery" that was doing an initial sale of its product over the weekend. I looked at their logo and decided it would be a great logo to etch onto a beer glass.

Friday, I sat down and designed a perfect duplicate of the Schoolhouse Brewery logo, and on Saturday Morning, I went to Canadian Tire and bought a couple of boxes of 500ml Pilsner style glassware.

I created a new profile for the new glassware, and etched a couple of samples using the Schoolhouse Brewery logo. The results were so stunning, that I sat down and created a new file for another local brewery and etched a couple of glasses with their logo.

Here's the results for my Schoolhouse Brewery and Boxing Rock Brewing Co. glasses:





I created 2 of each glass, and I'll package them up and mail them to the respective companies with a cover letter sometime tomorrow. It actually took me longer to create and LASER cut some custom cardboard packaging inserts for the standard Canadian Post medium sized mailing box than it did to create the glassware.

 

[James_B]

My wife is a voluntary coordinator for a Canadian animal rescue organization, and they're holding an online charity auction to raise funds. I've previously created a set of four custom Irish Coffee mugs for another animal rescue's auction, and they were a big hit, so she volunteered that I'd supply a pair of custom engraved mugs for their auction.

Over the past few months, the management committee has been having a problem deciding what design they'd like on the mugs.

For a while, the plan was to use a dog themed design I'm already selling and have mugs in stock. Then it was going to be the rescue's logo (I spent some time doing the artwork for that design), then they decided that a generic animal themed design may sell better. Today, I was told that the auction starts within a week, so could I come up with a design, and etch the glasses and send them photographs by tomorrow.

I sat down today and created this pair from scratch:



The design looks a bit busy in the photograph, but that's a product of the design on the other side of the glass being visible. The important thing is that the committee loves the design.

Hopefully, they'll make them some money. Doing a full wraparound design on a mug with a handle is a difficult task, and the etching alone of the final product required 15 minutes in the LASER for each mug. A couple of test etches on some earlier reject mugs meant that there was about an hour of LASER time involved.

Normally, I can sell an Irish Coffee mug with the usual level of engraving for about CAD$12 each. The extra engraving time required to do the full wraparound design on these mugs meant that they would have to be priced at something like $20 each if I were to do them for retail sale. We're also donating a 1lb bag of locally roasted gourmet coffee beans, so it's a pretty good package. I'll get a donation receipt for their value from the rescue, and I can claim it on my taxes.

 

[James_B]

I'd been planning on experimenting with etching marble or granite pet memorials on the LASER engraver, and was trying to figure out what we'd do to test the process. The decision was unfortunately made fo us.

Exactly one month ago, we had our daughter's dog put to sleep after he was diagnosed with a major tumor on his liver. It hit suddenly, and he was fine on Friday, seemed to be a bit off his food on Saturday, but by Sunday, we wondered if he'd see the end of the day. We got the first vet appointment on Monday morning. An ultrasound showed an enormous growth on his liver. As the prognosis was just a few weeks of a miserable existence if we treated him, we made the decision to have him put to sleep. That afternoon we buried him with his favourite squeaky toy under a tree on the hill he spent much of the Friday playing on while we did some maintenance of our grape vines next to the tree.

Yesterday I did a little road trip to buy an 8 tile box of 12" x 12" black granite tiles. A $40 gas bill and 4 hour round trip on the highway meant that we could get 8 tiles for $56, versus our local big box hardware store that had exactly the same tiles for $96/box, but they didn't have them in stock, and we'd still need to do a 1.5 hour round trip to pick them up when they arrived in a week or two.

This afternoon, I cut one tile in half and went from this photo:



to this etched memorial:



in the space of a couple of hours.

We'll place the plaque on his grave on the weekend.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Sorry to read of your loss James.

What a fitting tribute, well done.

Regards

 

[James_B]

It's been a busy time lately with the LASER system. I now have a table at the Yarmouth Farmers' Community Market every Saturday, and am seeing a pretty constant stream of clients.

We don't sell much off the table, but we are getting at least one order for custom work each week.

When I'm not doing glassware, I've been doing a lot of precision wood cutting (mostly things like signs and packing and presentation pieces).

Today, I decided to try a bit of 3D inlay work.







The dimensions are 160mm x 60mm and the materials are 1/8" Birch faced ply and 1/4" Birch faced ply, cut using the same file and assembled like an inlay.

The centre pieces in the As and the R had to be recut as the originals fell through the mesh top of the cutting table.

At the moment, everything's all held in place with a strip of packing tape at the back.

 

[James_B]

Here's an example of creative packaging.

Last weekend, one client ordered 6 shooters with our "Cafe Newf" design. I engraved the shooters on Monday, and then decided that I needed some creative packaging. The first thing that came to mind when trying to package six shooters was this:





Material is 1/8" Masonite.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Great work James as usual.

Your idea of "packaging" goes above and beyond.

Regards

 

[James_B]

I'm really having a great time with the LASER now that the weekly table at the market forces my wife to let me have time to do my thing with the machine.

The market is pretty selective just who they allow to have a table ... got to be a local primary producer, artisnal baker or cook, or are creating artisan craft work. The market committee members have been trying to convince us to join the market for about a year. Since we joined, a fair percentage of the other table holders come to see what new item we have on our table this week.

I've reached the point where what looks like complicated interlocking wooden pieces aren't really a challenge, and something like the shooter packaging was a quick and easy project in CorelDRAW. I suspect that 4 years of on and off tinkering with my Dr Who TARDIS model has taught me a lot of things. Here's how it was 4 years ago.



It's since got a lot more refined and I'm working on a special commission to create a Christmas present for a friend's Dr Who mad niece. I have one of the old blue painted TARDIS models plus the latest variant on the table display, and they are garnering a lot of interest. A number of commissions for other work has been received based on the client seeing what we could do with simple 1/8" Masonite sheet.

The wife of the client for the shooters runs a table for a Nova Scotia Whisky Distiller (they have their own design and production team for the distillery glassware, so no sale there), and the client helps out on the table on Saturdays. The client is also part of the team at the local Hyundai dealership and we are currently in discussion about doing 8 to 10 dozen custom "rocks" glasses for the dealership to give to customers. If it goes ahead, that'll be a close to a $1000 to $1200 before tax order. The glasses cost us about $1 each.

Last Monday was the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday. On Saturday I delivered 1 dozen custom drinking glasses to one of the stall holders at the market for her huge family thanksgiving dinner. The glasses were engraved to match the client's current china plates and crystal serving dishes. She got a healthy discount, but it was still just a shade under $120 plus tax for the dozen glasses (It was a difficult 2 stage etch with a pattern on the on the base of the glass to match the engraving on the base of her crystal and engraving on the side to complement her china).

The week before I delivered 8 glasses to a Scot that wanted rocks and coolers engraved with his clan badge (he'd already had it done as a tattoo). That was another $10/glass for 8 glasses, before tax.



It's Friday evening here, and within the next hour or so, I'll have to engrave a Pilsner Glass to replace one that was sold off the table last Saturday.

 

[nine4gmc]

Lots of good things, but sorry about the dog

 

[James_B]

Yesterday's creation. A 2/3 scale prototype of a future project.





The head is 13.5" from the back of the wall mount to the tip of the nose, and measures 14.5" across the widest part of the antlers.

I started on Sunday evening with some detailed photographs of one made out of cardboard, and by yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, I was cutting my version out of a 4 foot by 2 foot piece of 1/8" Masonite that had been sliced into 3 pieces (24"x16.5" + 24"x14" + 24"x17.5") that would each fit into the LASER cabinet. The cutting from the 3 pieces of Masonite required almost 25 minutes of LASER cutting time.

The bigger version will be made out of oak plywood. Due to the size limitations of my LASER (24" x 18" max cutting size), the section with the antlers dictates the absolute maximum size of this design deer head that I can make with my equipment, but even at that size, there'll be a lot of wastage and it'll probably require almost a full 4 foot by 8 foot sheet.

I've since started playing with Autodesk's free 123D Make program, which can take a standard 3D modeling file, and do all the coding for creating the inter-meshing slices.

 

[James_B]

I've done some re-engineering of the files I used for the Masonite test piece, and it have made a new one out of 3mm (1/8") birch plywood.

It's still the same size as the Masonite prototype, but all the cutting files have been re-aranged so that it can be cut with consistent wood grain direction from a single 4ft x 2ft piece of 3mm plywood. The plywood is first sliced up into 3 unequal sized sections (all 24" wide, but different lengths) that would each fit into my Universal VLS4.60 LASER cutter/engraver's 24" x 18" cutting area.

The central spine is doubled up to make a 6mm (1/4") piece. The two 3mm pieces yjat make up the 6mm spine are mirror imaged so that "good one side" ply could be used and are glued together for strength.

The shield is now 3 layers that are glued together with hidden wall mount holes and locking tabs that allow the head and neck section to lock onto the shield, but with the ability for it to be disassembled for storage or shipping.

Dimensions:
Width: 365mm from antler tip to antler tip
Depth: 335mm from the tip of the nose sticks to the wall
Height 515mm from the tip of the antlers to the bottom of the wall mount shield

I'm still working on a slight revision to improve the fitment of the ear and antler sections that will hopefully stop the antlers from wobbling.

 

[kazlx]

Sweet, I've been really interested in the laser stuff, especially after having my plasma for a while though. Not sure the wife would let me set up inside the house though haha.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Just checking in James, fantastic work.

You are turning out some really great pieces.

Regards

 

[James_B]

Sweet, I've been really interested in the laser stuff, especially after having my plasma for a while though. Not sure the wife would let me set up inside the house though haha.

The smaller units from Universal (VLS2.30 and VLS3.50) are desk top units designed to operate in an office environment. They're not much bigger than a large format desktop printer. If you can't figure out how to set up an outside exhaust for the air extraction system, then Universal has a fully self contained air handling unit that includes all sorts of filters so no external exhaust is needed.

 

[James_B]

Just checking in James, fantastic work.

You are turning out some really great pieces.

Regards

Thanks for the kind words.

We're getting a reputation at the local artisan and craft market for having some stunning stuff. One woman is going to pay a visit tomorrow to look at the deer head.

Every week we get more and more locals mentioning to us that they'll come to see us about ordering some custom Christmas gifts. Unfortunately they aren't actually placing orders (got 2 small orders to deliver for tomorrow and a sample piece to do for a larger order), and I suspect that a week or two before Christmas we'll see a rush of orders that we won't have sufficient time to complete in time.

 

[James_B]

Posted this already in the "What did you do "IN" your garage today?" thread, but I figured I'd also post it here and include some more information.

I finally had had enough at battling the keyboard on my main graphic design computer. I can't really touch type, and half the keys had the painted on designations worn off.

I know I could have bought a replacement keyboard for a few bucks, but I liked the challenge of fixing the problem myself. Besides, I like this keyboard, as the key caps and the switches are on two different layers, so I can remove a few screws and the entire key cap assembly comes off in one piece and it can be placed in the dishwasher when it starts to get grungy.

I scanned in the keyboard, and imported the scanned image into CorelDRAW, and used it as a guide for a new CADCAM file for my LASER engraver. The design of the keyboard meant that it would sit flat in the engraver and I could do the entire keyboard in one pass.

I used a font called FreeSet, and the size of the characters varied from a shade over 8 points to almost 16 points. Some of the characters had some left to right axis compression, and a number of the symbols and all the arrows were hand designed.

Each key row is 3/4 inch (19.05mm) high, and the key designations on the row each row are top aligned with their neighbours. Along each line, the key caps are spaced horizontally by the same 3/4 inch (19.05mm) amount, and each character or symbol is left aligned relative to the key cap edge. Because characters have different widths, despite them all being left aligned at a precise 3/4 inch (19.05mm) spacing, the character centres aren't evenly spaced. Without the keys in the image as a reference, the character positioning looks wrong.

Here's how the CorelDRAW based CADCAM file for the LASER looked.



While the above file is an exported gif format file, the data was sent to the LASER from within CorelDRAW using the LASER's custom print driver.

Everything was done as a "raster etch" (scanning left to right then incrementing a tiny amount down the page just like an ink-jet printer). A 100% black area on the image would tell the LASER to use 100% of the power level that I selected as a maximum in the LASER control file, and 0% black (aka white) would turn off the LASER power while the LASER head with the final optics was passing over that area.

I wasn't sure about the composition of the plastic, so I did a number of passes at low power until I was happy with the result. Doing multiple passes at low power is a good way to eliminate problems with melting of unknown plastics, and giving you good control of the etch depth.





As soon as I've cleaned off what remains of the old painted on designations, I'll paint fill the engraved area.

By the time these designations wear off, there won't be much left of the keys.