I’ve made some more hand spinners. This one is number four. One side is plywood, the other side is two layers of plexiglass
I took one sheet of white plexiglass, spray painted it black, then etched a circuit board pattern through the black paint. I then glued a layer of clear plexiglass on top, and glued the plywood piece to the back.
I sanded both sides to round the edges, and applied polyurethane to the wood side.
Finally, I glued in the center bearing. The other three are press-fit, and can be pushed back out if needed.
Later I found some rubber feet left over from another project, which happened to fit perfectly as caps for the bearing, making it easier to hold the spinner.
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I discovered hand spinners a couple weeks ago, and since I’m a maker I decided I’d rather make my own than buy one.
My first version was made using FIMO clay, which you may be guessing was a bad idea. FIMO isn’t very sturdy. It broke twice within a few days of finishing it. If I kept using it, it would soon have been more super glue than FIMO.
This is my second version, made from two layers of 3.5mm laser-cut plywood plus the bearing. I hammered out the design, cut & etched it, and assembled it in about an hour.
One nice surprise: the plywood cut cleanly in 2 passes. I expected to have to make 3-4 passes, which I had previously experienced with this plywood. My theory is that the garage is so cold that I’m getting a thermal shock effect helping the material separate better than at higher temperatures.
I immediately found the first major problem: I made it a little too big. I can get it to spin if I am careful, but it will often hit the crook of my thumb. My initial design also did not include any sort of weight to help it spin longer, but I figured I’d drill some holes and add them after a trip to the hardware store. I will be revising my design and cutting a new one soon.
After my 2-year-old had a bunch of fun painting a helicopter and a birdhouse from kid craft days at the nearby hardware stores, I decided I’d like to make a toy or two of my own design for her to paint. Thus was born this simple wooden airplane toy.
It’s cut from 1/8″ plywood and glued together. Since jet fighters are fairly flat, so is the toy. The only perpendicular parts are the vertical tail fins. Not a very exciting design for construction, I’ll admit, but my 2-year-old loves it.
You can get the design files over on Thingiverse and cut one out yourself!
The house we moved into has a nice garage, and I was able to get my laser cutter set up pretty quickly. But as soon as I test-fired it, it tripped the circuit breaker.
I later tried plugging an extension cord into one of the outlets inside the house, to see if the problem was specific to the garage or if every circuit would trip. That works fine.
As it turns out, garages usually have a different type of circuit breaker than most other outlets in a home. They use a Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter (GFCI), which looks for signs that the circuit has been shorted to ground, that is, that more current is going in than is coming back out the other end of the circuit. Bathrooms also tend to have GFCI breakers.
There are also Arc Fault Circuit Interrupters (AFCI) which watch for arcing in order to prevent electrical fires.
The type of circuit breaker used in the majority of outlets is simply watching for current over its rating, in my case, 20 Amps. I assume GFCI and AFCI breakers will also trip if the current drawn through them passes their threshold.
So I learned something new.
The take-away from this, for me, is that I need to run an extension cord into the house when I use the laser cutter.
I just got a new job up in Logan, Utah! I’ll be programming in-house software for a circuit board manufacturer.
Of course, that means now we have to move across the state. We have various paintings and pictures which need to be packed, and I find part of the best protection for wall hangings includes putting cardboard protectors over their corners.
So, rather than try to find someplace that sells them, I just cut my own out.
This will probably be the last thing I make until we get settled in the new house.
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I recently etched a PCB as part of a project to make simple blinky light toy using a surface-mount ATTiny13. I’ve now populated and soldered the board.
Prior to finishing the blinky toy, I had to program the ATTiny with the sketch to control the LEDs. It’s pretty simple, it just loops through the six I/O pins, turning them on and off in turn. Once I had it programmed, I finished putting the circuit board together.
Here are the steps for the rest of this process.
1 - Solder Paste Stencil
I use the laser cutter to cut a stencil to use for applying solder paste. I say “cut”, but what I really do is etch all the way through a sheet of transparency. Once that’s made, I tape it over the PCB with the holes lined up with the surface-mount pads. Then I smear solder paste through the holes and scrape off the excess. This leaves behind solder paste where the holes are, just as thick as the stencil. It works out to be just the right amount of solder.
2 - Place surface-mount components
I use a pair of tweezers and place the surface-mount components in place. I push down into the solder paste a little bit; it sticks enough to keep things in place til I melt the solder.
Here’s the board with all the SMT components placed:
3 - Solder surface-mount components
Next I use a heat gun (I set it at 300° C) to heat up and melt the solder paste. Any off-alignment components tend to re-align themselves during this step, but I do have to double-check that everything came out right.
4 - Drill and solder through-hole components
I drill holes for the through-hole pin components, in this case the battery holder and a 2-pin header used as a sort of on-off switch. Then I solder them with a regular soldering iron.
Last, once I’m all done soldering, I use an old toothbrush and some rubbing alcohol to clean off some of the residue from soldering.
I made a circuit board which, when I’m done, with have 6 LEDs and a microcontroller, powered by a button-cell battery. I’ll run through my process here.
1 - Laser etch
I start with copper-clad, spray-painted with black primer, and then use the laser cutter to etch away the paint where I want the copper removed. I take a few cotton swabs and some acetone (nail polish remover) to scrub away any paint residue after the laser is done.
2 - Rough cut-out
I use a small saw, in this case a jeweler’s saw, to cut the board out so I have a piece small enough to fit in the acid bath.
3 - Etch
To minimize the amount of copper that has to be eaten away, I take a sharpie to the corners to provide a quick and dirty mask. Then I put the whole thing into a bath of ferric chloride acid, and gently rock the tub to keep the liquid moving across the copper surface. I periodically shine a light through the board and the acid to see if it’s close to done etching. When I can see the smallest details shining through, I know it’s done. I take the board out with plastic tweezers, and rinse it off.
4 - Remove etch mask
Next I use acetone again, but more aggressively, in order to remove all the paint from the remaining copper surface. I alternate soaking it in acetone and scrubbing off paint as it breaks down. I can usually get it clean in 2-4 passes.
5 - Solder Mask Mask (sic)
I should have taken a couple more pictures here. I take a sheet of regular printer paper, use the laser cutter to etch away the areas I want exposed copper, then tape a piece of transparency sheet over the holes in the paper. I spray some black primer spray paint over several light passes, depositing an opaque layer on the plastic sheet. This will be used as a light mask for the solder mask in the next step.
6 - Apply Solder Mask
The solder mask I use is a thick green goop. When exposed to ultraviolet light it cures and hardens into a solid. The spray paint from the previous step protects specific parts of the board from the UV light so that the goop doesn’t cure there.
I spread a thin layer of it between the circuit board and the transparency sheet, line the paint up over the copper traces, and hit the whole thing with my UV lamp for a few minutes. Then I peel up the transparency and use a paper towel to wipe up the uncured goop.
Once I’ve thoroughly wiped off all the copper pads, I put the board back under the UV lamp for a few more minutes to make sure it’s 100% cured.
7 - Final Cut
Finally, I cut out the circular shape, and file the edges smooth a bit. The solder mask peeled off around the edges this time.
Now I have an unpopulated circuit board. I’ll add the surface-mount components first, then drill holes for the battery holder (left and right sides) and jumper (top right). I’ll cover the remaining steps and finished product in a later post.
I know this project is only a little laser related (the supporting structure is laser cut cardboard), but it's what I'm currently working on, and I figured some content was better than silence.
I'm making progress on my sword prop. I've got most of the cross guard built and sculpted (paper mache and paper mache clay), and the blade is entirely constructed and in the process of being smoothed.
Just as a quick experiment, I put a rock in my laser cutter and engraved an oval and some text on it. It’s not amazing, but it tells me that I can mark stone. Darker stone like black marble should with out much better.
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I often make circuit boards for little projects, and one of the steps involves using ultraviolet light to cure the solder mask. I could use sunlight, but I often work on these circuit boards late at night, so that’s not practical. Plus sunlight is quite a bit slower than a UV lamp.
So I built a panel of UV LEDs to use when curing solder masks. I used to just clip it to the batter pack with alligator clips when I used it, and held it up with whatever random objects were on the counter at the time.
Yesterday I cut out a stand to hold the batteries and the LED panel, and added a switch just to make it easy. I used a heat gun on the part which holds to panel up, and bent the plexiglass rather than gluing a joint together. This morning I riveted and soldered it all together, and now I have a single, stand-alone tool for using when making circuit boards.
Our basement apartment door is past the garage side door, and sometimes packages get left at the garage door by mistake. How’s the mailman supposed to know which door is an apartment and which is the garage?
So I cut out some letters from plywood, etched holes in the back for magnets, sanded and painted them, and stuck then on the garage door. It’s still up in the air whether this will actually work, but at least the mail delivery people have a fighting chance now.
Since they are going to be exposed to the sun and rain, I went overboard, giving it four coats of Rustoleum paint. I’m hoping this will seal the rain out so it doesn’t get into the wood and ruin it.
I did a quick test of cutting a living hinge using my K40 laser cutter. It looks like crap, but I learned what I needed to from it, so I can start using the technique in future projects.
Cut from 1/8" birch plywood, 3 passes at 50% power.
My wife and I recently got new phones, and along with them, we got Tudia cases. The cases are 2-piece hard/soft combo, and the hard plastic part is actually white with a high-quality paint.
I etched through the paint to expose the white plastic.
My wife’s case, teal, used a design from Thingiverse.com. I had to slice the 3D model to get a 2D vector to use for the etcing.
My case, black, used a design by kmykse84 on deviantart. I didn’t like it quite the way it was, so I moved some elements around, but the overall design is the same.
To make sure I had the best settings for the job, I did a test etch on the back side of the hard plastic panels. This ensured that I wouldn’t get a burned yellow look to the plastic, while still blasting away the paint for a clear image. I also used a cardboard holder cut to hold the case perfectly in place, so that the image would line up perfectly on the case. The results were awesome!
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My niece came to stay with us for a week, and while she was here she and I made a simple wood-cut pendant with the symbol for Hylia. My wife made the string it’s hung from.
Cut and etched from 1/8″ plywood. In addition to etching the Hylian symbol, I also did a shallow cut along the edges to make a crisp line.
I made a simple lacing card for my daughter, who absolutely adores turtles. I had planned to make a whole series of them, but she showed no interest in playing with this one. No point making half a dozen variations on a toy she doesn’t play with.
Cut from 1/8″ birch plywood, then painted with 2-3 coats of Rustoleum spray paint. The design has 5mm holes for the shoelaces to go through.
