CNC (Lasers, Routers, Etc)

It's actually a really useful hobby, too. Having perfectly sized, custom storage boxes really comes in handy.

The post cutting work, like gluing, sanding, staining and epoxy inlay is the part that I've really been half assing because I don't have space at my current house to leave everything out to dry or good places to sand. Not having a garage/shop at my current house is slowly killing my soul.

Worked on this thing today while trying to learn inkscape a little more.

k^M said:

Interesting, plant stakes it looks like? Some of those would either take a ridiculous time to engrave for that level of detail or come out as a charry mess I would think.

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Took 90 minutes to do all of them. Yea, I should have gone for score lines instead of engraved.

Was texting my wife, brother in law and mother in law about COVID19 today....

And I made this because I was going through Inkscape tutorials when he texted that picture.

My wife thinks it's kind of funny, but doesn't really want to see it anymore because it's her brother and she said "it looks like a BDSM thing".

So now I'm working on this, laughing my fucking ass off and trying not to wake up my daughter. I need help with a new name.

Darth ____________ ?

I've been making friends at the butcher shop because we've been eating from home so much and I asked them if they would be interested in some custom packaging for gifts (I told them I started going to the butcher because my woman got me a gift card for valentine's day and they liked the idea for a promotion).

This is a small sample, but I think it's coming together nicely. Still working in getting the fit perfect so that (hopefully) the box is all pressure fit and doesn't need any glue.

I'm just now starting to sell some stuff and I'm harassing the woman to pick a company name and register a business so I can start stamping a logo on shit. Theres no other investment to make besides $200 to register a business, so I don't see why we shouldn't just roll the dice and take a crack at it. We're not taking it too serious, but here's the ideas so far:

Tum-A-Lum Customs
Frog water Customs
Rumbadger Customs
2Crackers Customs
Nigerian Prince Customs

Obviously we're trying to keep it local and/or "cheeky". Input?

Order going out! Still pretty fucking informal and half-ass, but the family is getting into it and I'm more excited about that than anything else.



I included a couple that are sanded and stained too, but I'm hoping he passes in those and just sticks with the rough cuts that still have scorch marks and stuff. On some stuff, I like the aesthetics of the burn marks

I gave those to the guy for $100, he's sure he can double that selling them at the competitions he puts on. We were discussing future plans and designs and I mentioned that I had about 10 hours into designing that one, so he threw me an extra $200 for design time and said to make 30 more, then start on 50rnd or 100rnd ammo boxes for 5.56 and 7.62, for the reloaders. I really haven't penciled everything out yet, but that's a pretty reasonable start. The material cost for 1/8" Baltic birch is fucking nothing, so if all I have to do is design the boxes and run the machine, letting him handle assembly and sales, I'm happy.

I really wish that I could find some places to part-time/hobby apprentice at for all the weird shit that tickles my fancy. I like being able to figure some stuff out on my own, but it's slow going to have to slog through all your own mistakes.

Falxy-US said:

Let me ask you this. I have a business idea that basically is hinged around people having bracelets with custom engraved QR codes on them. How would you go about doing that? It could be bracelets, something that hangs off a necklace, etc.

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I use an API to generate QR codes for a digital inventory system that I've been working on at work. Generating the QR code is easy as hell, so no issues there....including a URL link like k^M said.

As far as the laser goes....I would think that engraving them on a medallion of 1/16" or 1/8" wood would work just fine, then use leather for the straps. The glowforge will cut leather, too. That sounds pretty easy, honestly. If you're trying to do them in bulk as a business, I would think that the hardest part would be autofilling an SVG file with a list of 5,000 unique QR codes and making them ready for the cutter, instead of doing them one by one. Does that make sense? I have no idea if that's the direction you're aiming, but that was the difficulty for me with the QR code / inventory system I was working on. I wanted to keep a running tally of existing assets and generating a new QR code that conformed to a certain naming convention, without any duplicates. Never found a good solution for that.

This is what I use to generate QR codes for Asset IDs that are already in a database: http://api.qrserver.com/v1/create-qr-code/?size=100x100&data=ASSET15

Hekotat said:

Some of it's not laser related, but some stuff we've made over the last few years at work as well as given away in this forum.

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That leopard is awesome!

This is the type of stuff I'm talking about re: apprenticeships. Not looking to make a career change or anything like that, I just want to spend some time around someone that knows all these tricks so I can make some of my ideas without so much trial and error. Are some of those CNC?

I worked at a prop house in LA for awhile....wish I'd stuck around a little longer to see how some of the pros put shit together. Feel free to use this thread as a damn blog, Hek! I like the details on techniques.