Posts

Showing posts from 2015

Merry Christmas

Image
Merry Christmas from me and Just Add Sharks . It's been a busy year and I'm well behind on Project 12 but maybe I'll be able to squeeze a 10th project out before the year end.

Gingerbread Deer

Image
The last of my gingerbread experiments for now, there are bigger plans for the new year and more food stuffs to cut but we'll see what happens.

Gingerbread Tree

Image
I had a whole sheet of gingerbread to cut so I measured the thickness and calculated an appropriate slot in the material to make a 2 piece Christmas tree. Nothing too fancy, below see it decorated by a child (who also drew and laser cut the gingerbread, by which I mean me)

Plywood Production

Image
This article from Kitronik about the plywood production process is actually really informative and useful. I use plywood in my machine almost daily and it's something I never thought about before. The log peeling is particularly clever.

Cake Update - Washing Line

Image
The washing line cake  also got iced and was presented to Christopher Biggins  live on stage apparently. I chuckled when I saw this video clip of it in operation the day before the show.

Laser cut gingerbread

Image
It's Christmas and I know it is possible to laser cut gingerbread so I thought I might as well give it a try. Eli and I made a batch from the BBC recipe  and he rolled it all flat using some 6mm ply as guides for the rolling pin. The bread expanded to 10mm thick and I drew some shapes for the laser. We went really slowly 2 passes at 10mm/s @ 80W and on the second pass could see smoke coming out the honeycomb so knew it had cut through. We were left with this intricate snowflake 10cm across and a rather nice negative of it too. ( svg here )

Cake Update - Flying Carpet and Smoking Lamp

Image
Aladdin's Magic Carpet got covered in icing and presented to the actors at the Panto. I don't have any video of it moving while iced but it does look pretty good. The lamp had a steam train smoker in the end of it so it was puffing smoke throughout as well.

BB8 Cake with all the Icing

Image
Dawn has now finished icing the BB8 cake and the results are incredible. Check out the video over on her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/DinkydoodleDesigns/videos/756211487817453/

BB8 Cake

Image
I wasn't really spending time creating an droid from a nearly 40 year old movie. I was tasked to make a moving head for BB8, I just realised I could make the same model applicable to both droids. The second servo controls the nod motion for the head. It is programmed to have several different movement pattern. Again the sphere body is just for representation and will ultimately be replaced by cake.

R2D2 Cake

Image
Rushing to be in time with the release of the star wars film I'm been drafted in to make some moving frames for droids. The cage for the body is a bit of a place holder as it's ultimately going to be made in cake. The head simply sits on top of the cake and is entirely self contained. An arduino nano drives a 9g servo to provide pan motion of the head. A 12cm plastic dome finishes of the top and is ready to be iced.

Ill Tempered Mutated Sea Bass

Image
At the start of the summer I bought one of the uber cheap laser engravers from China. We wondered if it was worth stocking them on Sharks (it isn't). The acrylic plastic feet on the ends of the machine were cracked upon receipt, the screws were done up too tight. Now I started fiddling with it 2 of these feet just fell off, it was a simple matter to cut myself some new ones and I made them out of 6mm Birch so they're tough as old boots.

First place trophy

Image
Here is the first place trophy for the war gaming competition. The trophies were all handed out yesterday which means I can show this today. I outsold myself, stretched the budget and spent a lot of time making a trophy as good as I could. The wings are made from wood veneers and are a remake of a previous item . The laurel wreath was redone with each leaf as a separate piece of 0.8mm ply. The wooden spoon was bought from the shop. The rounded base is a variation on my useless machine  and the plaque made from silver/black engraving laminate. The ribbon across the middle is two layers and engraved onto 1.5mm walnut.  

Carcassonne in the Wild

Image
I finally released my Carcassonne tile set. It's gone out onto Thingiverse so I can see just how many people download it. Currently the images don't appear to be loading over there but I can't tell if that's just me.  http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1193400

Nothing in Particular

Image
This is a post about nothing. I meant to write it a while ago but I got distracted making lots of awesome things and posting about those. I used to write about my laser cutter all the time because there was always some way in which it was failing or needing improvement and I don't do that any more. The simple fact is that I don't have anything to write about. I've had my Whitetooth laser cutter for about 18 months now . We started our own laser cutter company, so using our own machines day in day out and posting all the awesome things seems like a no brainer. In those 18 months I haven't had a single problem with my machine,  The extractor fan draws all the dust and particles out of the laser so the machine stays pretty clean, the smoke actually goes out the back which was a shock having seen other lasers.  The fine pitched mirror screws and locking nuts make alignment very simple (no more allen keys for adjustments) and the machine actually stays align

Moving Washing Line

Image
In the latest of weird cake things I've been making this one is a washing line. The washing line moves left and right carrying the clothes that are hung from it. It's mostly hand built rather than laser but but there is a very basic box over the electronics. The big challenge is that the 2 outfits hanging from the line could weigh up to 2Kg each. It's a massive strain across that span so I'm really hoping it holds out. The rope winds up on one drum as it winds out of the other one leaving the total amount of string on the line roughly the same. As usual more images of these things when they get covered in cake.

Aladdins Magic Carpet

Image
The newest cake project  is Aladdins Magic Carpet. Aladdin will be made of cake and we wanted him to be sat on a flying carpet. The prospect of making 10Kg of cake wobble around was a bit too much for me so I came up with this contraption instead. The whole device is based upon a Gimbal . The inner ring is fixed to some cake frame pillars  which will make it easy for Dawn to attach her cake Aladdin onto. The outer ring of the gimbal is driven by 2 servo motors to get movement in X and Y axis. The 'carpet' itself is made from some vacuum forming plastic, it will eventually be covered in icing. Because this plastic can be easily heat formed I took a hot air gun to it to give it some shape but also strategic bends on the corners also give it a lot of strength (you can see how much it was drooping in the video)

Gimbal

Image
A new project that I'm working on requires a two axis gimbal  that holds the item in the stationary while the rings around it move. It's made from 3 layers of Birch ply with the middle layer placed at right angles to the outer layer to keep as much strength in it as possible. The whole thing can only be 9mm thick when flat so I had to embed the bolts into the middle of the wood (bit hard to see now) and the rotating side of the gimbal uses an acrylic insert to minimise the friction while rotating. It's definitely functional but needed a few more tweaks for my intended purpose.

Mini Bin with Lid

Image
In a further development from the Agricola bins I did a quick test piece to see if I could make a lid for each bin. Games don't always stay the right way up and tokens can be flipped out of the bins, The lid sits in grooves that have been engraved into the sides. I was worried about weakening the sheet but it seems fine. Now I'm just wondering if it's worth doing for the whole box. ( svg here )

New Agricola Storage bins

Image
Project #43 was Agricola storage bins, they were sold to someone who wanted them and I vowed to make myself another set. Of course if I'm remaking the set I might as well add some design revisions and then if I'm doing revisions I'm sure I can improve the layout and then I can make the boxes better and OMG that was over 2 years ago. So yes I have finally remade myself some bins, but I won't be getting too attached to these either because I know some people that want them already. The bins were redesigned from the ground up copying the Linbin system  I designed. The living hinge base panel makes it easy to scoop tokens out of each bin. I had to glue the boxes together to maximise the volume because space is tight in the box and I can't afford any dead space. I shrunk the middle row of bins and added an extra row to hold the square tokens. The playing boards go over the bins and stop the tokens from moving between bins and the Occupation and Improvement c

Magic Santa Key

Image
I was asked to make a magic Santa key, personalised for my friends children. Ta da. Not sure there's much else to say, it's 3mm mdf painted with metallic acrylics and it's a good job our kids aren't old enough to be reading my blog yet :)

The new batch

Image
Bit of a slow day today, few bugs going round our house and extra children after school, the only thing I managed to get done was this batch of fairy doors for the local school craft faire. I added a few new elements into the mix (mushrooms and stockings etc) and changed the blue out for purple. I've got enough elements now that no 2 doors will ever be the same which is a nice touch.