Nova Labs

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.
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.

Custom wooden puzzles

Custom wooden puzzles

Andrew

Puzzle pieces

We have gotten into the near habit of visiting some friends the weekend after Labor Day, and this year I wanted to bring a cool hostess gift. Also visiting that weekend is another friend who has made wonderful baby blankets for both of our girls, and I wanted to give her something special as a thank you.

For my quilting friend, I had wanted to make her a squirrel-something for a while, due to her personal vendetta against them (something to do with a nest of them eating part of her house). Our other friends have long-hair dachshunds (no vendettas, but they don’t get along with our dog too well), so I thought to make them something with dogs.

Enter the puzzle.

I made a chunky wood puzzle a while ago to be suitable for children, but I wanted to try more intricate shapes with easier to laser-cut 1/4” plywood.

I bought dog and squirrel artwork so I could focus on the puzzle aspect… using Illustrator I hand drew all of the puzzle lines for each one, and tried to loosely inject some detail into what would otherwise be just a silhouette.

Custom wooden laser-cut squirrel and daschund puzzles

My take aways and tips for this project were:

  • Make the outline of the puzzle as a separate object that is cut last.
  • Keep piece lines as long as possible, and don’t divide them at intersections.
  • Use a honeycomb bed so pieces don’t fall down into the laser path and get damaged
    • I used the blade bed thinking that I’d reduce char marks on the bottom of the pieces, but in reality I got fairly pronounced smoke staining anyway. Also, I had to pause the laser to tape pieces together as they were cut. Not wanting to push too hard led to the masking tape not making full-contact and leaving its own discoloration… But at least nothing fell through the slats and got damaged.
  • The pieces are big enough that I should have protected the wood with masking or transfer tape from the beginning.

The boxes:Custom laser cut boxes for small puzzles.

 

These were my first tabbed-boxes… I used the box-maker website found at http://boxmaker.rahulbotics.com/ to give me my files, which I modified to smooth out the top edge. I also created a lip that would assemble inside the top of the lid so it wouldn’t jiggle around…

The file from the website was easy to work with, just needing to ‘join segments’ in Nova Labs’ laser program.

After I made the first box I realized it was way bigger than necessary. But, it was easy to shorten each of the side pieces by deleting a pair of notches.

Assembly with .004” cut width settings was good (I probably could have gone .006” to get it tighter) and thin CA was enough to hold it all together.

My last note is that these puzzles are pretty tricky; the uniform color top and bottom doesn’t make it easy for you to know what side is up!

Custom laser-cut long-hair dachshund puzzle Custom laser-cut long-hair dachshund puzzle

Custom laser-cut squirrel puzzle Custom laser-cut squirrel puzzle detail

Custom boxes for puzzles Kiss-cut designs in the lid of a box for a puzzle.

Christmas Stocking Hangers

Christmas Stocking Hangers

Andrew

Christmas stocking holders on mantle

It is the beginning of September and Christmas creep is in full swing. Craft stores already seem to have supplies out for all of the major 4th quarter holidays – I guess crafters like to plan ahead and be prepared?

Not me – I had just completed my laser cutter safety course at Nova Labs, and this was actually my first project just 2 weeks prior to Christmas, 2013.

5 pieces of art for Christmas stocking holders

Here are the details:

  • Material is 1/2″ thick oak, which was very slow to cut and had a lot of charring.
    • We actually liked the contrast of the blackened edge to the lighter wood and didn’t bother sanding these at all.
  • Art was created in Illustrator, from a mix of sources:
    • Reindeer was a simplified tracing of a small figurine we purchased in Copenhagen in 2009.
    • Snowman was more-or-less made from scratch.
    • The snowflake took inspiration from other vector snowflakes online.
    • Tree was straight from a Shutterstock vector library of Christmas trees
    • The ornament was a slightly modified Shutterstock file.
  • The base was designed with a notch to match the thickness of the wood hook.
    • Despite not really accounting for the laser kerf, it pressure fits in and doesn’t need glue or other fasteners to stay put.

Overall my first project went very well, with no problems that I can remember. We loved that these matched our style much better than anything we found online. I guess that’s the entire point of making.

Check out a PDF of the more original artwork.Christmas_Stocking_Hangers_2013-12-09

Assembly of Christmas stocking holder base
Assembly of Christmas stocking holder base.
Comparing snapshot of reindeer figurine to simplified outline
Snapshot of a reindeer figurine and the simplified outline of it.

 

Laser cut kite winders

Laser cut kite winders

Andrew

Laser cut kite winder A little project I did recently came from needing additional kite winders for my kids. Since the mid 90s I’ve enjoyed flying sport kites, and have tried to get my kids involved at least a little. In the Washington, DC area, the Wings Over Washington Kite Club holds a fun fly on the first Sunday of every month, typically on the grounds of the Washington Monument. Heading down there has been a nice way to give mom 2 hours free on a Sunday morning.

At the August first Sunday, I had one tube winder that was severely tangled, and just one other winder. I also knew I had some extra kites at home I’d like to start bringing, so I had to have more winders available. Since it was near the end of summer, only a small selection of kite line was still available at local retail.

With a page of results from Google Images for “kite winder” I made a file in Adobe Illustrator that looked about right. Add the names of the kids, and a generic kite’y message (along with a scribble technique I had wanted to try) and the art was ready to go. I found a few pieces of scrap at Nova Labs, and loaded the file into the laser cutter. A few test cuts, and then I ran the job.

Since the winders were symmetrical, I could easily remove the finished winder from the scrap, flip it over, and engrave the other side maintaining alignment. Easy!

Sanding the edges was the hardest part but necessary for putting a slight bevel where you hand would grip, and where the line wrapped around the winder.

Here’s a PDF of the file if you want to make this yourself: Kite_Winders_2014-08-06

Laser cut kite winder  Laser cut kite winderLaser cut kite winder  Laser cut kite winder

 

Nova Labs and the makerspace

Andrew

One of the hot buzz words of late seems to be “Making” or “The Maker Movement.” In many ways this is nothing new, as I’m sure folks in the late 70s building homebrew computers from scratch would attest to. Thus said, neardy creative types like doing things their own way even if it means a lot of extra work, sharing what they’ve done, and learning new skills.

If you consider that ‘people like creating stuff’ as a rule, you can also add to your rulebook that basically anything gets cheaper or better over time. Computers, TVs, toys way more detailed than I ever had as a kid… And tools such as CNC mills, laser cutters and 3D printers, which used to cost big bucks and have complex software have started to drop in price and are easier to use than ever. But, even if the price is a quarter as much as it used to be, a $8,000 laser cutter is still beyond most individual’s budgets.

Nova Labs logoEnter the makerspace (or hackerspace). Community workshops that are often open to the public, teach classes, host show-and-tells, provide tools for people to use, and most importantly, provide a venue for like-minded people to talk, hang out and learn from one another.

Nova Labs is a Makerspace in Reston, VA that started in 2011. I began attending in the late fall of 2013, drawn primarily to its 100 watt laser cutter named Mongo.

As a local non-profit, Nova Labs’ goal is to build a community of people who enjoy making. There are even programs I’ve seen that try to start this early, as NL hosts events for kids and teens such as take apart days (don’t get yelled at by your parents for disassembling the printer), providing practice space for local high school robotics teams, First Lego League, etc. Anyone can learn how to use an Arduino, solder, use a jointer and planer in the wood shop, or build a 3D printer.

Many of the projects I’ll talk about on this blog are the direct result of my going to Nova Labs. There are simply more tools there than I have access to at home, and there are people way smarter than me that I can ask questions of.

If you live near Washington DC, come check it out. Nova Labs is open most nights depending on what classes or groups are meeting there; an icon on the Nova Labs website shows the open/close status via an Internet-connected switch by the front door. The Nova Makers Meetup group is where you need to go to sign up for classes.

See you there!