In going through pictures on my phone today and came across a few pictures of laser cutter projects I did while I was at Santa Clara. I didn’t do a post on them at the time, so I thought I would rectify the situation.
The first project was a Smaug hanging I made for Lloyd. I went all out for this and went to Woodcraft to buy nice wood since it was a gift. I then cut this into a rounded rectangle with two holes in the top corners for hanging and followed by a negative image of Smaug that gleaned from The Hobbit. I had to collect all the little pieces of wood cut out during this process and keep them in order so that I could use them in the final design later.
Next, I cut out the same image of Smaug in transparent red acrylic. This required a few tweeks of the laser cutter settings to ensure the acrylic fit snugly into the wood. This acrylic outline was fit into the wood first followed by all the little wood interior bits. I was then faced with the problem of how to hold all the pieces together. My solution was to take a piece of white card stock and cut it down to just cover the dragon image. I glued this to the back of the wood so all the small pieces could be glued on the back side rather than worrying about having glue show on the image. Since the card stock was relatively thin, it also allowed light to shine through the red acrylic when in was held up to a window.
I was very happy with the result and feel like it’s one of the nicer things I’ve made in the MakerLab.
Smaug the terrible!
My second project was also Lord of the Rings themed. Lloyd and I decided we’d like a nice set of coasters so we both searched for our favorite line drawings from Middle Earth. Once we found images we liked, I chose a plain white acrylic for the coaster interiors and a pale wood for the bottom and border. First, I cut four plain wood circles and four circle outlines. The outlines had the same outer diameter as the plain circles. Then I cut out four smaller circles from the white acrylic and rastered our chosen images on them. I used paint to make the images stand out more so they would be visible sitting on a coffee table. The ring was the hardest to do since I used two colors. Finally, I sealed the wood to protect it from moisture (a definite occurrence for coasters) and glued the assembly together. We were happy with how these turned out and have gotten a lot of compliments on these coasters.
The mithril gate of Moria, Sauron’s eye inside the one ring, the white tree of Gondor, and Smaug again.
