David Prutchi, whose surplus plutonium probe shenanigans we covered last week, received Micro-Mark’s branded version of the popular Sieg X2 mini mill for a recent birthday, then retrofitted it with a CNC kit from CNC Fusion, and then retrofitted it again with a CO2 laser head he built himself from a surplus tube. David writes: […]
Don’t risk breaking any bottles next time you carry beer to a party. Now you can make your own 6 Packer, a laser cuttable six pack carrier designed by Thingiverse user timogiles. Since it’s designed in OpenSCAD, an open source parametric 3D modeling program, you can easily change the material thickness, bottle diameter, fastener size, and hand grip size and cut a 6 Packer to your own specifications.
There’s something so charming about combining high and low tech, which is why I like Trammell Hudson’s latest tutorial. The NYC Resistor member posted an excellent guide on how to use a lasercutter to create intaglio letterpress plates out of acrylic, which is much less expensive than using the traditional copper. Intaglio plates have the positive image etched into them which creates reservoirs that hold the ink and are transfered to the paper.
Nick Leindecker of the Stanford Optical Society shows Laser Craze, a laser cutter that is controlled by two knobs much in the way an Etch a Sketch works. At Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 he allowed attendees to try out his invention on various burnable surfaces, while also showing his LED creations.
Addie and Stefan demonstrate Lasersaur at Maker Faire Bay Area 2011. Lasersaur is an open source laser cutter the team made after learning a laser cutter would be cost prohibitive for them personally. Using easily reproducible parts, the Lasersaur is intended to be built by other users and subsequently improved upon.
For those of you who want to practice dissent using statistics, you can laser cut your own spray paint stencil with an adjustable pie chart and lettering. This comes to us from Golan Levin, who offers Illustrator PDF files in two sizes so that you can act like an infographic rebel in your own neighborhood. […]
Recently, we’ve been messing about with motors and gears at Pemtech. Students in one of my classes are building an underwater ROV, and we don’t have any decent propellers. Rather than shop for them, we’re fabbing our own with the laser cutter and Makerbot. Earlier this week, Jett worked out the proper dimensions to fit a plate to a motor shaft. He did this by measuring out a range of holes and then cutting them in quarter inch acrlyic. Once they came out of the laser, he tried pushing the motor into each of the holes until he found the ‘goldilocks fit.’ Once we had a plate, he used the same process to cut a series of holes in the plate that could be threaded with M3 screws. This setup allows us to attach anything to a motor.
