I made a walnut frame for one of my Celtic knotwork frog prints! This frame fits 7cm square prints (the format Open Press Project uses for their exhibitions).

Classy Paper Tape Reader Complements Homebrew Retrocomputer - If you were one of the earliest of early adopters in the home computing revolution... - https://hackaday.com/2025/03/11/classy-paper-tape-reader-complements-homebrew-retrocomputer/ #retrocomputing #lasercutter #tapestorage #papertape

Paper Tape – With LASERs! - Though it is many decades since paper tape was commonly used as a data input or st... - https://hackaday.com/2025/01/29/paper-tape-with-lasers/ #retrocomputing #lasercutter #papertape #punchtape

A Little Pigment Helps with Laser Glass Engraving - The range of materials suitable for even the cheapest laser cutter is part of what... - https://hackaday.com/2025/01/28/a-little-pigment-helps-with-laser-glass-engraving/ #titaniumdioxide #lasercutter #laserhacks #engraving #glue #tio2 #cnc #pva

a Creality Falcon 2 12W laser engraver, with enclosure and extractor fan and air pump, has come up for £300 on Facebook Marketplace nearby... we're considering taking a punt on it
#LaserCutter #LaserEngraving #CNC

I think we've got places in the flat where exhaust can be vented and supervision/fire extinguishers applied

Goals would be to make enclosures for electronics, and 1/12 models of furniture and house fittings, from thin ply and MDF - I believe a 12W diode laser can cope with that right?

Someone at our makerspace is struggling with the laser cutter, and it's a problem I've never run into before, I've never seen anything like it - so I thought I'd ask here and check if anyone has any clues.

They're trying to make boxes using this box generator: https://boxes.hackerspace-bamberg.de The box shapes export as SVGs.

The laser cutter is a HPC LS3060 with 50W CO2 laser, connected to the makerspace laptop with a USB cable.

And the laser cutter software is Lightburn on Windows. The files end in ".lbrn2".

Basically, everything looks perfect in Lightburn, including in preview. But when they go to cut, even when each individual shape is in a different layer, the laser will put extra cuts in or randomly move off at a strange angle and make cuts that aren't in the Lightburn file. (See photos of errors attached.)

Have you ever seen anything like this? If so, did you ever work out the cause?

Edit: FIXED! We emailed the people who sold us the laser cutter, and they suggested we check whether our makerspace member was "streaming" the cutting from the laptop with the controls in Lightburn, or if they were sending the file to the laser cutter first and then directly cutting from the laser cutter UI. The member was "streaming" it from the laptop (pressing "start" in Lightburn on the laptop), which apparently can cause these kinds of problems. When they switched to sending the file to the laser cutter and pressing "start" on the laser cutter buttons, it fixed the problem completely and instantly. :)

Anyone with #lasercutter experience have advice? I’m using a Trotec 360 with rotary attachment on glass. This is 100p, 35speed and I get line shards on the glass. My hand is cut up. Have tried double pass at 20% power, same. Image is black design from Illustrator. This is the glass. https://a.co/d/ddTJ32S

Pixel Prints and Other Gaming Crafty Things

Sometimes (a lot of the time) I’ll look back at my blog posts and realize that there’s some really big thing I’ve been doing or working on that would have made for an interesting blog post, and while I might post about them on my socials, like Mastodon or Tumblr, I won’t ever remember to mention them here. This is going to be one of those topics, and there may be several more that I go back to shortly. In this case, I started having fun converting pixel art into vector art a while ago, and then converting the vector art to 3D that could then be sent to a 3D printer. For a while I was doing it just to have fun and print cool things for me, but after a while I thought maybe other people would be interested too, and made an Etsy shop, Minus World Prints.

A while ago I found this video by YouTuber Kari detailing how to take a video game sprite and make a 3D print out of it. I started with the example that she does, first with the Atari E.T. sprite, and then with Mario. My first Mario was just a solid color, as the 3D printer I’m using can only print one color at a time. But after a while I figured out that the slicer program I’m using can actually pause my print to change out the color at designated times. It’s a bit of a chore to manually change out the colors, but the results are pretty good. I have to carefully consider which sprites I’m going to make into 3D prints, as more colors means more work, and also each one needs to be a different height, so if you have too many colors things will start to look weirdly stacked. And then I also have to consider if I have a PLA plastic color that closely resembles the sprite.

NES sprites in general are pretty good for these limitations, as traditional NES sprites only have three colors. Although after a while people started getting fancy and figuring out ways around that limitation, by stacking two sprites on top of each other essentially. So far I’ve been doing whatever suites my fancy, so they’re kinda of all over the place, from Link and Mario to all four ninja turtles from the first TMNT game, and even Indiana Jones from the Atari 2600 version of Raiders of the Lost Ark (which I had to add a background to, because otherwise parts of him that are diagonal wouldn’t have anything to adhere to).

After a while of doing straight pixel sprites from games, I started experimenting a bit, first by editing existing sprites, then by making some original ones. I did a slight edit on Jason from the Friday the 13th game, as the pose I liked him in didn’t have both feet on the ground, so he wouldn’t be able to stand. I edited the sprite a bit to adjust for that. Then I decided to edit Link’s sprite in a more Halloweeny fashion, by changing his colors to be more spooky, and replacing the cross on his shield with a stalfos skull!

From there I tried some completely original sprites, like a Halloween jack-o-lantern that has a Pikachu face carved on it. My latest one so far is an 8-bit version of the Flyers mascot Gritty. I’m really pleased with how these two turned out, and I’m looking forward to making more original pixel art.

Besides a 3D printer, I also have access to a laser cutter/engraver, and I’ve been trying to design something that I thought would be an interesting item to sell on Etsy with that. I’ve come up with a sort of layered, ‘shadow box’ style scene of the NES Zelda. The front layer has Link and Zelda, and the title, the middle is the triforce, and the back layer is the overworld map. It’s all cut from birch wood, and I like the combination of electronic pixel art being depicted with a natural material like wood. I’m hoping I make some sales on this one, because I think the style would work so well with so many NES games! I want to do Metroid, Final Fantasy and many more using this pattern. Fingers crossed.

Maybe one day I’ll get a 3D printer that can print multiple colors at once so I won’t have to do the stacking thing, but until then I think these have been coming out pretty good. They make fun decorations around my computer desk and I like looking at a physical space version of a pixel sprite that I’m used to seeing on my TV screen. If anyone is interested in checking out what I’ve got so far, the store is Minus World Prints.

Laser Cutters: Where’s the Point? - It is funny how when you first start doing something, you have so many misconcepti... - https://hackaday.com/2024/08/14/laser-cutters-wheres-the-point/ #laserengraver #lasercutter #cnchacks #featured #skills

LightBurn Turns Back the Clock, Bails on Linux Users - Angry Birds, flash mobs, Russell Brand, fidget spinners. All of these were virtual... - https://hackaday.com/2024/07/31/lightburn-turns-back-the-clock-bails-on-linux-users/ #softwarehacks #compatibility #lasercutter #linuxhacks #lightburn #linux #news

Sometimes students wanted a silhouette of their pet :)
#libraries #lasercutter

Got access to a #lasercutter? Did this today, grab an accurate measure and work out the height of marks needed to turn a discarded jar into a measuring device! A quick @inkscape of the measurements and then to the #lasercutter! #reuse

There we go. I didn’t think it was the whole thing from the size of the enclosing box, but it looks like it’s all here. LET’S BURRRRRRN!! #lasercutter

I’m getting a laser cutter. I’m going to be a laser cutting person. Let me know if you want some stuff laser engraved or cut! #lasercutter

My Saturday project is modeling how I can use a servo to automate the blast gate on my laser cutting / engraving machine exhaust.

Because of the 6" duct size on the blast gate an outboard sliding pivot point setup seems to be the most viable.
#LaserCutting #Lasercutter #Maker

Faux Silkscreen On A PCB Made With A Laser Cutter - If you’re getting PCBs professionally made, silkscreen usually comes free as part ... - https://hackaday.com/2024/03/18/faux-silkscreen-on-a-pcb-made-with-a-laser-cutter/ #lasercutter #toolhacks #marking #pcb