Projects

Wall sconce spacer/shim

Wall sconce spacer/shim

Andrew
Wall_Sconce_Spacer_06_on_wall
On the wall and ready to go.

This past spring we bought new wall sconces to install on the exterior of our house. Unfortunately, the one in the back didn’t sit flush against the wood siding, due in part to the mounting tabs on the electrical box in the wall.

I wanted a spacer that would put the light a little further from the mounting plate, and have a cutout for part of the electrical box that was outside of the edge of the light. I also wanted to ensure it would stay in place.

The diameter of the plate that attached to the wall was measured, along with the inside height and width of the light. Additionally, I measured the outside width and height of the light and added a little buffer – this would form the shelf that the light would actually sit on.

A small notch was left in the bottom so that any moisture that might get behind everything could drain. Another notch was left in the top to accommodate the bracket already on the wall.

After cutting everything on the laser cutter, it was assembled with some Gorilla Glue, and then painted.

Everything fit as planned, and the large gap in the top was sealed with outdoor caulk.

Fundraising keychain prototypes and variations

Fundraising keychain prototypes and variations

Andrew

Laser cut keychain prototypesNova Labs will soon launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the new space. As part of the team preparing for it, I created several prototypes for laser-cut acrylic keychains to be offered as backer rewards at the lower levels. In not much time, I was able to make several variations on the Nova Labs logo, including engravings, cut out parts, different shapes, etc.

In the end, we decided to go with the more practical (and more durable due to fewer cutouts) version that includes an engraved ruler on the back.

These were cut out of 1/8″ acrylic, purchased from Delvie’s Plastics.

Check out the campaign, due to launch in early March, 2015!

Laser engraved keychain tag
Engraved Nova Labs logo keychain tag.
Keychain tag ruler
Back of the keychain tag, showing a ruler with mm and imperial scales (1/8″).

Office ‘privacy please’ sign

Andrew

The Doc sign closeupOur office recently converted a small room for making phone calls (given our relatively open floor plan) into a space called “The Doc”. Here you could video-chat with a doctor or RN in lieu of going to your general practitioner for basic diagnoses.

We added frosted window film to the door for privacy, but the sliding barn-doors didn’t have a lock. A double-sided sign with some velcro tabs was created to indicate if the room was occupied or not, but it wasn’t terribly attractive.

The Doc original 'privacy' sign
The original sign created to indicate if the room was occupied or not.

I was inspired by the way a porta john or airplane lav has a visible ‘occupied’ indicator. Mine would be circular to match the look of the logo for the company’s wellness program, with a cutout for some fun text to say ‘come on in’ and ‘unless you want to see my rash, stay out’ (ok, not exactly those words).

As you can see from the file below, I tried to make a complicated detent to lock the indicator at each end of its travel. In practice, there was plenty of friction between the layers of material to not require this. Also, after about 2 months of being in use, part of it broke allowing the dial to rotate past ‘Privacy please’ a little bit. I eliminated this detail on the extra four I made for our other offices.

The crescent shape was glued between the solid back circle and engraved/cut top circle.

The center axle was a push pin stuck through the back and word/dial layer, which then had the plastic part cut off with a Dremel. I had laser cut tiny circles on each of those two layers so I knew everything would line up.

The Doc artwork and pieces.
Art files used for The Doc privacy sign, and the 4 cut components. Zoom to see the over-engineered detent for locking the dial.
The Doc sign installed
The Doc privacy sign installed.
Signs for other office locations
Four signs for other offices made a few months after the prototype. The detent system was eliminated as there was enough friction to hold the sign steady.

Camera Slider Controller – Sneak Peek

Andrew

Camera Slider - In ProgressFor several months, I’ve been working on creating a controller board for driving a stepper motor along a single-axis. AKA, a motorized camera slider!

While the overall project is over 2 years in the works at this point (it started being driven by a Lego Mindstorms NXT), this is a quick preview of its current configuration.

Stay tuned for much more on this project!

Christmas Tree cut outs – decorated version

Andrew

Finished Christmas Decorations

The big plan for the Christmas Trees from early December was to let my kids decorate them. We later decided to give them to all of the grandparents for Christmas; I was able to snap a few photos before we wrapped them and hit the holiday road.

Here they are. I’ll let you guess which one the toddler decorated, vs the 4-year-old!

 

Finished Christmas Decorations Finished Christmas Decorations

 

Adding a ball head to a GoPro suction cup mount

Adding a ball head to a GoPro suction cup mount

Andrew
A ball head attached to a GoPro suction cup mount
The finished mount used for filming the in-car portion of automotive reviews.

I have a GoPro, and bought a handful of mounting accessories to go with it, including their suction cup. If you have one of these, you’ll know that the GoPro mounting system is pretty orthogonal – you can tilt and roll easily, but not pan (short of undoing the suction cup and repositioning).

For my gig of shooting car review videos for YouTube, getting fine positioning of the camera has been a huge pain for our in-car shots in particular. I didn’t want to buy a new suction cup that featured a ball head, and I didn’t want to make any permanent modifications to my existing gear.

I found the Giottos MH1004 mini ball head for under $15 that would work well for the Hero 3, especially since I already had the tripod mount.

But, how to attach it to the suction cup?

Check out beyond the break for more detailed images and how I made it.

Read more →

Slotted together Christmas Trees and Snowflakes

Andrew

A collection of laser cut slot-together Christmas TreesA week and a half ago, I created a slotted together Christmas Tree decoration as a test. My older daughter saw it and asked if she could decorate it, but I couldn’t let her as I needed it for work. Given how easy it was to create, I went ahead and made her several more to color.

These were laser cut out of not-quite 1/8″ lite plywood. The Christmas Trees are 6″ tall, and the Snowflakes are 4″ tall. The flat ones were jammed into the open spaces on the sheet of wood so I didn’t waste as much material.

The items were downloaded from Shutterstock as they had several vector graphics containing multiple Christmas Trees, so I’d only need to buy one image. Same with the snowflakes. I looked for ones with simple, symmetrical designs.

If you want to make these, here are the steps (it’s really simple):

  • Size the tree to whatever you want in Illustrator, Inkscape, whatever…
  • Measure the thickness of your material.
  • Make a rectangle that is half the height of your tree, and where the width is the thickness of your material (in my case, 3″ x .11″).
  • Center align the tree and rectangle.
  • Duplicate the pair of items.
  • On one, ‘bottom align’ the tree and rectangle. On the other, ‘top align’ the items.
  • Use the pathfinder options to remove the rectangle from the tree, and you’re done.

Go past the jump for more photos:

Read more →

Box for crayons – custom engraved

Andrew

A wooden box holding crayons

At this point I’ve created a few laser-cut tabbed boxes (trading card box, boxes for custom puzzles, and another as an electronics enclosure). None of these had an attached lid, but since this particular project was a gift for the 2-year-old daughter of a colleague, I thought that was the way to go.

I took measurements for a package of crayons that was part of her birthday present, and added in the thickness of the .11″ (really, it couldn’t be a full 1/8″?) lite plywood I had. The box maker web application by Rahul at ConnectionLab has been my go-to for these, but, I found that the pieces generated for this particular box had weird corners. I tried using another box maker found at MakerCase and it worked pretty well.

The pieces were symmetrical so it made it a little easier to work with, at the expense of the center tabs having irregular measurements compared to the others.

A wooden box with hinged lid

I took steps to smooth out the top edges of the pieces, and eliminated the tabs from the lid. Pins for the hinge were added, and I created a hole for the pin to go into. The biggest problem was that I initially made the center line of the hole above the part, so the lid didn’t sit flush with the box. I modified the file slightly dropping the hole down, and recut the 2 parts. At least those 2 pieces were pretty small so it wasn’t a huge deal.

Since most little kid birthday parties we’ve been to lately don’t include opening presents, and I haven’t been back at work yet, I don’t know how it was received. Hopefully she loved her name being engraved on the lid!

Ella engraved on the top of a wooden box
Ella and a small bird engraved on the lid of a custom laser-cut tabbed box.
Front view of a wooden box holding crayons
A custom laser-cut tabbed box for crayons.
Ella engraved on the top of a wooden box
Ella and a small bird engraved on the lid of a custom laser-cut tabbed box.
Prototype Christmas Tree gift

Prototype Christmas Tree gift

Andrew
Slot-together plywood Christmas tree
Assembled prototype of a desktop Christmas Tree decoration.

It looks like this is the second post in a row with work themed projects (you just don’t see all my draft posts!) Anyway…

Last year my team gave our internal clients Christmas cards to say thank you for working with us over the year. I thought we could step it up a bit with a company-themed gift/decoration to go on their desks this December.

This is a prototype of a laser cut, slotted Christmas Tree decoration. Made of 1/8″ birch plywood, I created the design in Illustrator. The shape is intentionally simple as we are going to cut or engrave some of our graphic resources on the final pieces. My wife is advocating for red acrylic, so we’ll see what happens after we discuss at work.

Stay tuned for the final version in the next 2 weeks or so.

 

Laser cut Christmas tree decoration
2 flat pieces that will slot together to make a Christmas tree decoration. This is just a prototype made of 1/8″ plywood.

 

Wooden trading card box

Wooden trading card box

Andrew

Trading cards for our marketing team in a custom box.My day job is as Production Designer for a large dot-com (I’ll see if you’re one of the 20% or so of the population that can recognize our brand). This project was to welcome our new president as part of his on-boarding, specifically as he visited Marketing. I don’t know who came up with the ‘trading card’ idea, but I got a survey link to fill out some info about me, and a request to be sure I liked my photo in the team directory. Since we didn’t want to give him a stack of loose cards, I was asked to make a box…

I made this along with the boxes for the dog and squirrel puzzles, and I’m happy with how they turned out (especially considering it was an important project and I hadn’t made a tabbed box before).

Lid detail for wooden tabbed-box cut on a laser cutter.The cards were 2.5” x 3.5”, and using interior dimensions .1” bigger made them very easy to put in and take out, but not jiggle around too much.

The pieces for the bottom of the lid certainly conserved material, but I need to figure out how to manage the kerf so the pieces fit more snugly. It’s a step in the right direction and worked ok this time.

Wooden tabbed-box cut on a laser cutter.

Bottom of a laser cut box for trading cards.