Yesterday I talked about my attempt to generate SVG to make PDF suitable for laser cutting Glass Plate Game markers. Today, I tried out the PDFs I had generated. After deleting the Haskell generator as a distraction, and fixing a few bugs in the Python generator, I ended up cutting some number markers. Here's what the result looked like, plus or minus photographic oddities:
There are several things worth noting about this…
It turns out that the two colors for the laser cutter really want to be yellow for the vector cut and black for the raster cut. The laser cutter software isn't so sophisticated about color separations.
I just did the numbers this time; I'll try the other counters tomorrow after more fixes to the files.
Those number markers came out of a sheet of 12x18x1/8" bamboo that cost $7. The area consumed by the cut was about 6cm2. It will probably be another 7cm2 for the other 4x4 area of markers. After some calculations, it looks like I could could conservatively make full sets of markers for about $0.50 each; substantially less if I tiled the markers up front and cut a half-sheet at a time, due to less wastage.
However, I need to leave some space between the markers. As it stands, you can see scorch marks at the join points of the number markers. What you can't see is the giant pile of teeny tiny interstitial pieces I picked out of the laser cutter. It looks like I need about 2mm between markers to leave a "frame".
Just for the record, the power settings used on our laser cutter were
I think more vector speed would be good next time to reduce the amount of scorching.
I didn't have the board supported from below when I cut, because it was too big to fit properly on the support tray. Thus, when the cut of each marker finished, it dropped down into the hole, which probably led to extra edge scorching.Th
The 6 and 9 are visually indistinguishable (doh). I put a dot with a sharpie on them in the photo, but I need to modify the generated SVG to put it in automatically.
All in all, it was a great exercise, and I am eager to continue it tomorrow. (B)