Laser Cutting – Madox.NET

Yippee 3 – Custom Wedding Cufflinks

Yet another ‘thing’ I am making from the Ponoko order I received earlier. This one is simple, they’re laser cut and engraved wedding cufflinks.

A simple rounded rectangular cut shape with the name or role of the wearer engraved on 3mm Bamboo. The bamboo is treated with Danish oil to harden and protect it as well as to stain it to a darker colour. Small golden cufflink blanks from eBay are then glued to the back to finish the piece. The shape and fonts can be changed to suit the groom’s interests too.

Very simple, very quick, looks nice and makes the wedding just a little bit more ‘personal’ for the photo shoots.

[Also have a 3mm Black Acrylic version, too lazy to photograph…]

Note : My name is not Andy and I’m not the Groom 🙂

Yippee 2 – Hyperboloid Stool (Preview)

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].

Quad-Hyperboloid - Pink Monofilament <-- That's a mouthful

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Yippee 1 – WTF Laptop Stand

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.

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Yippee – Ponoko order arrived! Guess what I’m making?

I was seriously thinking ‘Yippee!’ when I got the first of my Ponoko orders today… then I saw the ‘Yippee’ on the packaging… that was weird!

This is a gallery post of the unwrapping, too tired to assemble the bits tonight. Can you guess what things I’m making? [The ‘Welcome to Finland’ one is rather obvious…] Post your guess in the comments!

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Ponoko Engraving Test Photos

Another play order arrived from Ponoko, this time its a *secret*.

To get the best value out of the postage though, I tagged along several test pieces of the materials I was interested in :-

Corrugated Card Double Layer 6.0 mm
PETG Clear 0.5 mm
Felt Blue 3.0 mm
Acrylic Clear TRANSPARENT 2.0 mm
Styrene White 1.0 mm
Bamboo Ply 3.0 mm

Summary : PETG & Cardboard look AWESOME. Wonder why people don’t use the 6mm double layer cardboard more on Ponoko…

Read(view) on for more photos.

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Laser cut bamboo TV stand

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…)

Death to the unbelieves who thought this will collapse! — Death to the unbelievers who thought this will collapse!

Read on for the build process…

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Ponoko Bamboo ‘WTF is it?’ ‘thing’ – Early Photos…

Still no write up, just a gallery of photos I took of an attempted fit together… Fits nice and snug! Also testing how a clear polyurethane will look on the bamboo. Since I’m not giving a description what-so-ever see if you can guess what it is. Preemptive explanation if you think it looks crap/sucks, its because I was severely constrained by the cut size limitations…

Click more to see the gallery!

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No longer a ponoko virgin – My first order experience and photos

I recall reading a forum thread on Ponoko about the lack of information on what to expect from an order… so I figured I’ll post about my first order experience with Ponoko. Read on for some photos.

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A better way to export SVG files from Alibre Xpress (for Ponoko!)

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)

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Parametric Modelling in Google Sketchup and Ponoko friendly SVG export for Sketchup

The problem

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 🙂

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