I was experimenting with joins mostly. A sturdy press fit depends on several factors:
- material used
- material thickness
- laser strength (bigger curf)
- orientation of joining pieces
- depth/length of slit
As can be seen in the above picture, a good fit may still make or break on the 0.002 inch area. A good rule of thumb is adding 0.015 - 0.020 inch in total to the theoretical ideal fit.
I also tried more exotic joints:
This one can be rotated. As you can see here, I only added 0.01 inches, because I wanted light friction only.
We came a with a ton of applications and ideas for further jamming. :)
-Matthias
Mokey suggests neon for next iteration
On Friday, January 29, 2016, Joshua Horowitz <****************> wrote:
[-cdgsf]JAM REPORT: JOSH
I had never laser-cut anything before today, but it turns out it is actually really easy (at least, with guidance from practiced laser-cutters). And it is so satisfying. So, so satisfying. I don't know what evolutionary drive deserves credit for the dopamine rush I get when I punch out precut pieces of medium-density fiberboard, but it is far more productive than most of my evolutionary drives and I am not complaining.
I made an arrow!
(Paula brought up the arrow idea in brainstorming, possibly inspired by Bret?)
Close-up:
As I alluded to, this is medium-density fiberboard. Everything is joined together using press-fit slots with specs taken from Toby's "grid system". I put my source files (Comb Script for the rectangular stuff, SVG for the arrow itself) up in the laser-cutter Dropbox in a folder called "whiteboard". This link might work: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5ovq8e9lzvq2pud/AABYc9N3jsQsTqY8x1DWfcP3a?dl=0.
WARNING: The arrow SVG is 90dpi because Inkscape seems to demand that. You can turn it into a PDF with "cairosvg arrow.svg -o arrow.pdf -d 90". If you accidentally run "cairosvg arrow.svg -o arrow.pdf -d 72", the arrow will be cut off the edge of the page, so you will probably notice.
The arrow is cute. Painting it would make a world of difference in the salience department.
These modular whiteboard-top brackets seem like nice things to have around. I have some extras if you want to experiment.
I had a really great time today, and I feel more empowered now to make things in the world. Thanks to Paula and Toby and everyone else who made this happen and helped me out!
On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 3:19 PM, Toby Schachman <****************> wrote:
I've made a script for converting combscript svg's into laserable pdf's.
To use, first you'll need to share the lasercutter dropbox with yourself. Login to dropbox with:
email: **********************************
Share the "combscript" folder with yourself.
Now, in combscript you can export svg:
This will save "document.svg" to your downloads folder (at least in Chrome). Rename this file (so you can remember what it is).
Now drag it into the combscript/combscriptsvg folder:
A corresponding pdf will automatically be created in the pdf folder which is directly laserable.
(The automatic conversion is done by someone running the "watcher.coffee" script. It watches for changed files in the combscriptsvg folder and produces the corresponding pdf. I'll leave it running on my computer for the day, but you can also run it later if you need to. Directions are in the readme.txt.)
On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 11:01 AM, Paula <****************> wrote:
--Really Rough Schedule
11:20 Start
11:30 Intro
11:45 Brainstorm
12:00 Make! Perhaps set a schedule for laser cutter use?
Lunch
14:00 Dynamic Media has their weekly meeting
17:00 Check in to see if we want to share what we’re working on/ what we’ve made
COMBSCRIPT
Example file
https://www.dropbox.com/s/41it3ushdqfozpw/x%20joint.yaml?dl=0
Toby’s print.coffee
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hrofrn1nltmsrjy/print.coffee?dl=0
The one I edited which saves it to a SVG but hasn’t been tested yet because my new laptop is having problems
https://www.dropbox.com/s/efltccesgjfsot0/print_to_svg.coffee?dl=0
Useful Joints Article
http://makezine.com/projects/make-33/cnc-panel-joinery-2/
Upload PDF files here to send to laser cutter computer
https://www.dropbox.com/request/qWoKNN4bq47WZ0YUZIkv
123D Make: Slice up STL files and sometimes get them to fit
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