Perversions of an Engineer
This is the second ‘thing’ I am making from the Ponoko order I received earlier. I’m calling this post a preview only simply because I am nowhere near finished! A fusion of laser cutting fun, my most hated subject of math, and cool glowing monofilament is the Hyperboloid Stool [A very expensive replacement for a $5 IKEA stool].
This is the first of several things I am making from the Ponoko order I received earlier. Please allow me to present the WTF¹Laptop Stand!
¹Welcome to Finland / Waratah Train Fleet / Wednesday Thursday Friday / Worse Than Failure etc – Its not what you think.
A picture post showing the latest delivery from Shapeways. Joris just posted guidelines on stainless steel printing so I thought I’ll post some photos to show what tiny detail can be achieved.
The 3 different styles of rings designed using Alibre Xpress have arrived from Shapeways!
The ‘thin wire one’ (can’t think of a name) has never been printed before. It was first dreamt up in the shower , I’m surprised how well a scribble on the fogged up glass of the shower turned out printed in stainless steel!
Lets have a better look
Hey look, there’s my invoice. $1.32 USD for the ‘thin wire one’ (have to think of a name…or have to remember what I named it on Shapeways…) – great price eh?
The print quality is very good though it appears (not sure) that some post processing (polishing?) was done.
Nothing much else to say! Have to move on to the next post…Ciao!
Long story short: Got a new 40″ LCD TV, need a TV stand. Didn’t want to spend $200 on some crappy box stand. Didn’t want to make a plain stand. Thought that laser cutting + bamboo + silly design ought to make a good combination. (This is the WTF is it thing…)
Read on for the build process…
I wrote in here of an extremely convoluted way of exporting Alibre Design files into SVG for laser cutting with Ponoko. There were a couple of problems…and of course after some googling there was a better way!
(Note this is a generic DXF to SVG conversion and is applicable to many other CAD programs such as AutoCAD, Unigraphics, Catia, SolidWorks etc and is not limited to Alibre Xpress)
Continue reading “A better way to export SVG files from Alibre Xpress (for Ponoko!)”
Too lazy for many words, click the link below for a SWF animation showing the process…
I’ve recently signed up Ponoko’s Prime account and wanted to get something made. I rather into a rather annoying problem, Alibre Xpress doesn’t have a SVG export. I needed a way to design something and export it as SVG.
I’ll admit the long post title is a problem too 🙂