Been a busy week in the cave

Monday

Well was a working week in the man cave dident post as gifts for the wife so dident want any spoiler alerts for her.

Monday i remixed the lightburn camera mount as i only had some small screws to fit the mount so resized the hols to 1.2mm and made some cutouts in the base to allow it to fit in the middle of my handle nuts I might change this in the future to have holes through the base but wanted this to be quick and easy so I could calibrate the camera and getting all up and running nice and quickly.

I then calibrated the camera in lightburn. this took some understanding but that was down to me not looking at the calibration video on you tube correctly. It worked very well on my second attempt. i then aligned the camera using the alignment patten. once this was done the camera was set up for camera control.

So what is camera control? it’s using the camera to aligned materials for engraving its also used for tracing designs. for example, I wanted a design to be close to the edge of material I am using as didn’t want to waste any. so I updated image this places the image on the background of my work area in lightburn.

Tuesday

Tonight’s little project was for a game of airsoft I was attending at the weekend. I need to patch for a jacket in hind site I should have just done it straight to the jacket as my sewing skills are not as good.

so i decided to experiment with denim had seen a video online of some one using a fiber laser to age and cut out denim jeans. so this gave me the idea for doing the same to some old jeans i had. i cut a test sample. ran my calibration matrix for it. i dident picture it as was a lot of burn through from anything below 200 mm/s and over 40% power. i setteled on 400 mm/s and 20% power.

using my camera I positioned the cutout piece of jean leg on the table. I then focused the laser. I ran the frame option to double check the position of material and hit play. i had also placed a box around the design an put the power at 40% 20mm/s this cut the denim very cleanly.

think i will now do it directly on the jacket as my sewing skills ere not up to much as image beneath shows.

Wensday

today project were some more gifts for mothers day. so I had brought a load of slate hearts last year when pound land was doing them cheap. so I had a seen a design online so I decided to do something similar I changed the text a bit as the wife does not like mum or mother so mummy it was changed to that.

i then did another screen update to show material on the bed and aligned my design to it last week i ran a test matrix on slate pictured below now it was cheap Spanish slate were as the slate i was using was the more expensive welsh slate but gave me the speed and power.

I decided on 65% power with a speed of 400 mm/s as gave the cleanest pass worked a charm. see picture below the final item.

I then decided to run some fun glass coasters for my wife. so did mummy est 2017 coaster and a mummy gin only coaster. decided to used laser bond 100 on one coaster to see what it looked like I settled on the speed of 300mm/s and 55% power as I had run a test matrix as well on glass. I tend to do this on all the materials I own as means get them usually right first time then.

just adding another monitor in the cave and clearing up more as need to make some space so i can get every thing up and running.

going to have a few days off as need some rest and relaxation as got a lot  going on in the day job back next week with more fun stuff.