Fire The Lazzzor! – Learn how to use the 35 Watt Laser cutter at NYCResistor

 classes, lasers  2 Responses »
Feb 012009
 

fire the lazzzor

These classes fill up, reserve your spot now!

Harness the power of an Eplilog 35 Watt Laser! In this class you’ll learn everything you need to know to make the ideas in your head become a reality with a laser.

Bring a laptop and design ideas. If you think of it, install inkscape on your laptop, it’s opensource and free.

In this two hour class, we’ll walk through all the steps from idea to pressing the “go” button on the laser. We’ll cover safety and basic design skills in Inkscape and you’ll learn how to do a burninate test to find out if something is laserable. After the two hours, you’ll have time to prototype something until 3pm!

After learning the basics, each student will create their own design and lasercut it on the laser! A $10 lab fee is included in the ticket price and covers 12″ x 12″ of acrylic or wood and time on the laser cutter to cut and etch it.

I will be providing bagels and cream cheese. Give me a heads up if you are a vegan and I’ll make sure to have some jam or tofu cream cheese!

Photo Credit: Jared Klett

Lionel Hutz Had The Right Idea

 lasers, NYCResistor  4 Responses »
Jan 212009
 

I like laser etching bizarre materials and the latest is compressed cellulose sponge, which can be found at most craft supply stores.

Emulating a fantastic lawyer from a classically elegant television show, The Simpsons, I made sponge business cards.
http://flickr.com/photos/kellbot/3215659987/

Compressed sponges expand when you put them in water, its awesome! They were cut on a 35 watt laser at 100% speed, 100% power, and a frequency of 1000.

Expanded Sponge

You can pick up some of your own on Etsy. They’re super fun to play with. Oh, I guess you could use them for cleaning too. I did a whole bunch of tests with sponges, with full details at kellbot.com.

From Tinysaur to Woolly Tiny

 lasers, tiny  2 Responses »
Nov 152008
 



Not wanting to get Tinysaur to get all the spotlight, I bring you… WOOLLY TINY. Like a Woolly Mammoth. But Tiny.

The pattern comes from the epilog website and the assembly was done with a pair of tweezers and a baby syringe full of Elmer’s glue.

If you’ve always wanted your own mini mammoth, or just want to show off you have the steadiest hands of anyone ever, you can pick up the pre-lased parts on Etsy.

Fire the Lazzzor! Make holiday decorations and learn to rapid prototype using the 35 Watt Epilog Laser.

 classes, lasers, NYCResistor  2 Responses »
Nov 092008
 

Update! New class added at new time! Sign up here!!! I am also going to be teaching this class in the new year!

Flying Spaghetti Monster Holiday Ornament

Sign Up For The Class!

On Saturday, November 22nd, you can harness the power of an Eplilog 35 Watt Laser! In this class you’ll learn everything you need to know to make the ideas in your head become a reality with a laser.

In this two hour class, we’ll walk through all the steps from idea to pressing the “go” button on the laser. We’ll cover safety and basic design skills in Inkscape, the open source vector editor and you’ll learn how to do a burninate test to find out if something is laserable.

After learning the basics, each student will create their own design and lasercut it on the laser! A $10 lab fee is included in the ticket price and covers 12″ x 12″ of 1/8″ acrylic and time on the laser cutter to cut and etch it. Bring a laptop if you’ve got one and design ideas for your own holiday decorations.

Because this class starts insanely early (10AM) I will also be providing bagels and cream cheese. Give me a heads up if you are a vegan and I’ll make sure to have some jam or tofu cream cheese!

Folded paper boxes

 lasers  No Responses »
Oct 172008
 

After attending the first Processing study group, I set out to use Processing to generate files for my favorite thing… laser cutting.

I needed something to package my Tinysaurs in, and got tired of having to manually draw out the box template every time I wanted different dimensions. So I wrote a program to take the dimensions I want and spit out a box. They end up looking like this:

Laser-cut boxes

Processing has a PDF export library which I use to generate the template in PDF format, which Corel Draw is able to read. Processing also has an SVG export library, but I didn’t have much luck getting it to work. I’m looking into using Python instead of Processing, because it apparently has a nice DXF library, but so far Processing is working pretty well.

If you want to check it out, the box generating program is available in the NYC Resistor SVN repository. Which is public, hooray! The code is only vaguely commented, but it should be pretty clear what it’s doing. Maybe. Leave questions in the comments if you have any!

Of course you don’t need a laser to cut these out, and xacto knife would work just fine. But… I have a laser so I use it. You can get the pre-generated PDFs of boxes in various sizes on my blog, http://www.kellbot.com

Lazzzor Cut Laptop Stand

 lasers, NYCResistor  9 Responses »
Oct 112008
 

The other day while hacking at the Resistor space, I realized I was getting a crick in my neck sitting hunched over at my laptop. I needed some sort of laptop stand to get the screen up higher, and one that I could get my external keyboard under so my computer wasn’t too far away. I’d never seen exactly what I was looking for, so I figured I’d whip one up!

A little while later, with some help from Inkscape and our Lazzzor, I had this laptop stand. I’m putting it up on Etsy to see if anyone else is interested in having their own.

This recycled cardboard model goes for $8 and is sold 100% in support of the laser. Support your local hackers! Acrylic and wood models are coming soon. View the listing & more pictures

Laser etched perl obfu

 lasers, Software  1 Response »
Aug 252008
 

Look at that, it’s a perl obfu etched on to the back of my phone. This was done at 1200 dpi, 40% power and 100% speed. The code takes “[new york city resistor]” and transforms it into “just another perl hacker”. The hardest part was the formatting into ascii art using vi. You may be able to see that I had to pad the code a bit at the end.

Wanted: Powdered Black Plastic

 lasers, Reprap  3 Responses »
Oct 302007
 

I have an idea I want to try out involving sintering (melting) powdered plastic with a laser as an alternative to extruding plastic from a nozzle.  To do this, I need some sort of plastic, ideally ABS plastic that is powdered and will absorb the laser light.  I’m guessing it will be an IR laser, but I figure black plastic would be a good bet for this.

Any ideas?

 Posted by at 1:44 pm
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