A complete set of your own, Periodic Table of Element fridge magnets... 118 Acrylic Tiles with Rare Earth Magnets!
I have located a motor for $150 USD + shipping. It is being shipped tomorrow and should arrive Tuesday or Wednesday. Honestly... by the time this is over, I don't think there will be an original part left on this entire machine!!!
As always, Andrew, Kevin and James!
Talk two steps back! Grinding out the sheets... about a third of the way through the dots and then...
So, I start fiddling with things, and the X-motor feels a bit rough. I start taking things apart and I discover this...
So now I need a new x-motor. Sigh. This is starting to get really frustrating!
I'm looking for a motor... will let you know in the next day or so.
As always,
Andrew, Kevin and James.
Not an 'Update' per se, but a personal note.
I want to thank all of you for sticking with us. We have certainly had our trials, and this is quite possibly the longest 'unfulfilled' campaign out there, but you guys have been awesome! We are becoming experts... of the laser anyway! And we all have great ideas of what we would like to do next, but we need to see this through first.
There have been a lot of sleepless nights worrying about where the next part/piece/component/solution will come from, but in truth, when I step back, I see a beautiful (to me) shop set up for some excellent projects in the future.
We are actually churning out work now, and I have complete faith in James and 'Yoda' Adam, to solve the Laser Match issue. We WILL get this done!
We are sleeping better... albeit on a cot in the shop...
In conclusion, you guys are the best.
Thank you,
Your Laser Servants,
Andrew, Kevin and James.
Okay, we are almost there. I have learned a lot in the past few weeks and I am going to try and explain a couple things here.
Lasers have an X and Y motor. The X motor is for moving the 'head' (focused beam or 'collimated' beam) in the X direction (horizontally across the table). And the Y motor is for moving the head in the Y axis direction, or Vertically.
Collimated
Definition: laser beams with weak divergence. German: kollimierte Strahlen.
Category: general optics. A collimated beam of light is a beam (typically a laser beam) which has a low beam divergence, so that the beam radius does not undergo significant changes within moderate propagation distances.
When engraving, the head moves rapidly along the X axis (back and forth), firing the laser at specific times to 'etch' the surface of your material. One of the 'Fine Tuning' adjustments, and the reason we needed the LED screen, was to adjust the "Laser Match".
What does this do?
This adjustment is to compensate for the Laser firing in the same location, regardless of the direction you are traveling along the X axis: in the positive (right direction), or the negative (left). Fancy talk for the head shooting back and forth... left and right. So... Laser Match can be tested by running the laser at full speed and full power (the optimal setting) on a piece of anodized aluminum and looking at the lines to see if they appear sharp. This would mean the laser is adjusted correctly and the laser was firing in the same spot both left and right. Again, fancy talk for "not blurry"!
Here is a cropped shot (the entire sheet is really crowded as we ran the test dozens of times).
Look at the line on the left in the red oval. This line is actually only 0.007" of an inch. Here you can see that it is not a good match. the left fire and right fire 'overlap' where the black anodize is removed, but the lines are not directly over top of one another and hence the 'blurry' look. This was at 600 dpi. The 'dots' of fire here are 0.007" 'long'. So... very small lines instead of dots.
So, the upshot of all of this testing was that something else is going on and we aren't sure exactly what. The Laser Match was good at lower speeds and lower power, but it would be months to engrave at that speed, so a solution must be found. James has taken it to his Boss. Think of it like this... if James is Luke Skywalker, Adam is Yoda. Adam will know what to do.
So, in the meantime, we have set up the program to run the 'back sides' of the sets. This is fine, because we are simply engraving a rough circle to give the adhesive a purchase. We don't want those strong magnets staying on the fridge and the tiles pulling away, do we?
So, until next week or so when James returns from his business trip, I will be running these!
8 sets per sheet... about 150 sheets!
Yup, I'm putting a cot in the shop!
Here's a short video of the 'dots' being engraved:
I know... the machine looks dirty, but trust me. It is 10 years old and has cut 1.5 million wooden coasters... that's as clean as I can get it right now!
As always... more later.
Andrew, Kevin and James
A couple of videos to tell the story... okay.... three videos...
Then I crossed my fingers because... well, I have soldered a circuit board since University.... analog days here people!
I don't know about you, but I am ecstatic!
Then, after cutting the 48" x 96" sheets into 2 - 20" x 96" sheets and one 8" x 96" strips on the table saw... no pictures because it took both Kevin and I to run the saw and sheets, we cut the strips into 32" lengths for the Laser table.
And that left us with this stack of laser ready acrylic...
Ya, who would have thought you would be looking at $3,360.00 USD of acrylic in this little pile? That's $4,725.74 CDN (real money!).
So, now we are waiting on James to come and 'fine tune' the laser for that 'perfect line' and we will start engraving. We have 2 passes of engraving and one of cutting for each piece. Plus the process where we get to paint white into each tiles engraving. We won't be showing you that, because we think it is pretty cool, and our little secret system. Each engraving will be filled with bright white acrylic paint! Yup... teeny tiny brushes!
As always,
Andrew, Kevin and (recently) James.