Haha. I’m taking that compliment, and wearing it with a badge of honour! Thanks @StumbleRunner XD
I know you all are hungry for more updates. The evenings have been design heavy, and we have a good lot of projects for the weekend. And next week we should have a big production run that we’ll put the machine through. Just finalising the order details. Most likely going to be ~140 Coasters - each unique. Waiting on to hear i they want marble, cork, slate, acacia wood (all pre-cut). Or they may opt for a cheap option, in that case we’ll likely do 15-20mm Gaboon Poplar core, and those we will cut ourselves on the Ray. So I’m kinda’ hoping they choose that!
Measured exterior noise db, at it sits between 65 - 67 db with the Air Assist going as well. I’ll test the db with the lid open in a tick as well to simulate a ‘no enclosure’ situation. I expect it to be a couple db louder though because of sitting in an enclosure which may create a slight ‘boombox’.
Here are some raw photos from what we have been up to so far on our ‘Blood Hunter’ (Ray). You can see the ‘Barbarian’ (A350) in there too. (all our printers and devices have D&D Class names - we names our SM1 the ‘Bard’ because it “sings” so loud =p).
We won’t be able to print the rest of the Bag Tag display today - or really try the ‘depth map’ burn either. We need to pick up some more wood first. Bag tag display needs much wider wood (550mm), and the ‘depth map’ art piece I want ~20mm thick sheets to try with.
We picked up some more wood today! A bunch of test pieces to try different woods, and different thicknesses. And a bunch of MDF cut to the Ray’s 600x400mm work area for prototyping and some products.
Well. After having to tweak the settings a few times because of triggered the Flame Detection sensor (yup the 40w is a beast), it looks like I have a viable proof of concept for bas-relief engraving.
Instant learnings. Use MDF for this. Layered ply sets off flames and sparks as it hits glue and gum at full power. I’ll update with photos when done as well, but visually it looks like at deepest it is around 5mm.
Well, that was fascinating. Totally possible to do bas-relief. With a little more time and effort put into tweaking settings, you could get some stellar results. For reference, here is the original provided by @nweolu
So. Use MDF. Grain and gum and glue… The enemy of bas-relief engraving. I also think a second pass in the opposite plane may be a good idea (this was horizontal lines - so vertical for the next pass). It ended up being 2.55mm deep at 3000mm/min (and 5.4mm deep when at 1000mm/min - but this kept tripping the flame detection - and fair enough. Check the video below with it running at 1000mm/min:)
I won’t be pursuing more bas-relief engraving projects for now. This was purely a proof of concept to see if it was possible. And it is. It does not look incredible, or something I’d be happy selling. But with more experimenting I’m confident we could get some really interesting and cool art out of this style.
And here is the full size prototype of the Bag Tag display stand I shared earlier in the thread. We are thinking about making some minor adjustments to allow for business cards to be held in a base piece, but otherwise it worked great:
Sorry I missed your question! I had the wood, just haven’t had a change to test cutting yet as Christmas orders started taking priority. Hopefully get some play time over the New Year’s break.
