On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 4:33 PM, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I've been meaning to design and laser cut a contraption for our Science Sideshow at the Cal Academy NightLive LIVE event this Thursday evening, but I'm rapidly running out of time.

Anyone able to give me a hand?

Basically, I found these vases that look just like giant test tubes - long cylinder with a rounded bottom. So now I want to make a giant test tube rack, and have them sitting at our booth with some food color and dry ice, steaming away. Would look awesome!

I got about halfway through designing the thing in Inkscape, but I've never dealt with designing fasteners for plywood before. Needs to have a wide base so it doesn't tip over, but also needs to be hangable from a wall, so the base may need to be removable.

If I were to order this through Ponoko, I'd probably go with something like their 1/4 inch amber bamboo plywood. Is there any plywood at Sudo? Recommendations for a good place to buy nice plywood?

There is some plywood at sudo room. I haven't tried cutting it, but I did cut a design recently so I could show you the process. There's an online guide for most of it (which assumes you have windows and illustrator) and then there are only two tricky bits:

  * Focusing the laser (which I'm still not sure how to do reliably, I just adjusted it while it was running until it looked ok)

  * Ensuring the pumps and end the external ventilation fan are running.

The two pumps are hooked directly into the printer. Just double-check that the water is flowing through the water pump. The external ventilation fan is inside of the vent tube that goes to the ceiling and just needs to be plugged in before printing and unplugged when you're done.

Other than that I managed to laser cut just using the guide that's linked from the sticker on the printer. One gotcha: The printer software will refuse to operate without internet for no good reason (FUCK that company). Oh and another thing: When importing stuff into illustrator some formats do not retain their size. You can double-check this (and fix it) by enabling rulers with ctrl+r then click and drag a ruler onto the work area to add guide lines (which won't be printed). These can help you rescale your work to the correct size, especially if you enable the "snap to guides" feature.