Projects week of 02/17/2012

First off, let me announce that yours truly had a birthday (and it’s sad that I automatically type “birfday” and have to correct it). Ahem. It was awesome and probably the best one that I had in a while. /end bragging

Last week was interesting. Again, we were thankfully really busy but I did get a chance to have some fun. I made my coworker a Valentine’s Day present TO GIVE TO HIS GIRLFRIEND. I have to capitalize that since he kept running around saying that I was making him a Valentine’s Day present and left off the important part. Grr. That gift was an exercise in patience as it was done on material that I hadn’t used yet. I am happy with how it came out although not so happy how the pictures came out. I also finally got around to doing my iPod and his iPod. Warning: both look beat up as we’re both somewhat addicted to music. At least mine isn’t as crappy looking as his, scratch-wise. I also got to engrave wood frames for the Department of Veterans Affairs. I was rather pleased with how they turned out.

The wood frames were rather neat as not only did they come out well but I also got to utilize the bed size of our laser. It’s something like 29″ x 17″, whereas our rotary engraver is only 12″ x 12″. I was just barely unable to fit three frames in at once. The accuracy on the laser is amazing.

February 10, 2012 Projects

This week has been both fun and busy. Sometimes being busy is fun, though, so I can’t complain. I got to make a few sample objects this week along with the every day work.

The laser does a freaking fantastic job on acrylic and I love acrylic. I think I have mentioned this before. Glass always frightens me, like I’m going to break it with my giant ham hands (note: anyone who knows me is rolling their eyes at this statement). Aside from which, as the snowflake that we did previously shows, the laser can cut many shapes into laser and have a beautiful, polished edge. Which I probably also mentioned but it bears repeating because I’m so sadly obsessed with my laser.

ANYHOO! Preview time!

Of photos and multi-color badges

Long story short, I’ve been sick pretty much all of January. It sucks. My family is trying to shove so many vitamins down my throat that I feel a little like a walking herbalist.

Anyhoo. I’ve been meaning to write this entry for a while, especially as one of the projects was a training exercise from when the most wonderful Scott from Trotec was out there showing us how to use our machine. Please note, this part was done around 8pm, when we were all tired, grumpy and hungry. For me, the last two are pretty synonymous.

We wanted to be sure that we could engrave photos before he left. I’d eventually like to do something in marble but for the purposes of this exercise, we had to scale it down to ceramic. First step, choosing a photo:

Week of 1/9/2013 projects

Let me preface this update by apologizing if anything comes out jumbled or completely lacking in coherency. I have been fighting off bronchitis and a sinus infection so my brain is several pixels short of a clear picture. (Gosh, that was absolutely dorky).

So aside from me being fairly useless, we also had quite a few other projects to attend to. The laser isn’t only for having fun! One of the benefits that I love is being able to run a whole bunch of little tags and having the laser cut them out as well. One of our customers frequently requests small tags (less than 1″ x 2″) to label switches and the laser engraves and cuts out about 75 tags in 17 minutes. That’s nuts, especially compared with how long it used to take us to complete the orders.

So, anyway, I did manage to get a few fun things done this weekend. The teaser is actually from the files that we used to engrave our showcased projects.

Week of 01/01/2012 Projects

Happy New Year! Hope everyone had a safe and fun weekend.

I’m slightly late on this, so forgive me. Last week was a bit hectic between being sick and short-handed here. We also were surprisingly busy – usually the first week of the new year is more of a “catching up” kind of week than a manufacturing week. Alas, most of my projects were stamp ones so this week’s work isn’t nearly as fun. Here’s your mini-preview:

Week of 12/25/2011 Projects

This week was fun! Typically slow weeks are awful but this time I got to play around with my laser a bit more and work on getting the website up and running. I got to engrave my first iPad! I also received a tablet (ASUS Transformer) and will be working on designing something amazing and awesome (of course) to put on it. On a side note, I beyond love my tablet. My poor laptop is getting neglected and unfortunately for my desktop, I haven’t had a chance to put the tablet down long enough to replace the power supply.

Ahem! Back to the interesting parts. Here’s a little preview of what is under the cut:

Last minute gift dressing

One of the things that we decided to try to make was a Christmas ornament out of acrylic. I love acrylic. It looks like glass but, at the very least, isn’t as delicate or touchy as glass is. Glass is really better suited for sandblasting, and alas, we do not do that. I would like to at some point in time, but that’s a whole ‘nother entry.

I thought about it for a bit and settled on a snowflake. I mean, what else better signifies Christmas? Apparently the weather didn’t get the memo, as all we’ve gotten is a bunch of rain. But fine, whatever, let’s just PRETEND it’ll be a white Christmas here outside of DC. So, back to the original thought – a snowflake ornament for my kid with the date. And here’s what we ended up with:

My apologies for the flash. I’m still trying to get this whole “product photo taking” thing down. However, I did manage to get a better shot of it along with one of it being used as a present tag, which is what we’ll do with it this year and then she will have it for decorating in the future!

Tis the season… for personalization!

So, I may or may not be a bit selfish. When you’re growing up with a sister who is 6ish years younger than you and who thinks that your toys = her toys, you want to make sure that the line is drawn somewhere. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it worked but at least I had a “BUT THIS HAS MY NAME ON IT!” to fall back on.

I’m not alone, though. Other people like to mark their possessions with their names – or others like to have it marked for them. One of the awesome things about being small is the ability to have a quick turnaround time. In the last 2 days, I’ve gotten a few last minute gifts to mark and thought I’d share them!

The first two pictures are of a shifter knob. This one was a little tricky because of the size and the shape.

October 6, 2011 – Our new arrival!

Even though this was a few months ago, I still remember the amount of excitement that I had for getting our laser. Sadly enough, I constantly tracked it, as if that would l make it arrive sooner. It was probably lucky for us that the laser was in stock and didn’t have to be manufactured! I think the UPS guy thought I was slightly crazy but he was really friendly, so I suppose that worked out.

It was like opening a Christmas present. A really, really expensive Christmas present that isn’t mine but that I get to play with almost daily. So what was in the box?