Sailboat shelf laser cut

Here's another laser cutting project from the DXFdownloads site: Sailboat shelf. The design in lightburn looks like this:

As usual cutting the design on the Adelaide Maker Space Thunder was straightforward.

Then came the task of how to support the shelf. My friend Pat helped again by suggesting a second smaller 3mm shelf with some 45 degree angular supports.

This was, you would think, a simple design but being a very rusty inkscape user I had to view some tutorials and also look online for hints. Finally I found the idea of putting some rectangular design pieces together and then tracing around them with the bezier tool!

To finish of required a little PVA wood working glue.

finger spinners laser cut

I'm still pinching interesting designs off the web. I signed up to DXFdownloads. Lots of adverts (annoying) but they do have some interesting free downloads. The DXF format can be imported into Lightburn (and Inkscape).

The finger spinner design loaded in Lightburn looked like this:

Quite confusing. But it turned out that this was three different versions of the spinner. Thanks for the help from George and Pat for sorting this out.

The construction took a while since it required gluing many fasteners into place. So far I've constructed two out of three of the finger spinners. Some of the fasteners fell through the laser cutter grid and I couldn't retrieve them all.

Anyway, they spin nicely! A satisfying project!

update 18/10/24: Cut some more joiners and completed the third spinner, which again spins nicely!

mechanical iris laser cut

I’m still on a laser cutter learning curve. Not ready to do my own complex designs yet so am searching the web for interesting designs done by others.

I found a free, mechanical iris Creative Commons SVG design on this Maker Design Lab site and gave it a go. Thanks to Theresa Wasinger for generously sharing.

Simple design (using Lightburn software)

Note that you will need a wooden dowel to hold the pieces together, a bamboo skewer will do the trick.

More artistic design

For this one you need a method to locate the tiny joiners if they fall through the laser cutter grid. eg. sweep out the scrap collecting try before the cut.

It's tricky connecting the top layer. A pair of tweezers to compress the joiner ends helped here.

What have I learnt so far: That setting up with Lightburn and doing the cutting is straightforward. I'm working at the Adelaide Maker Space and they have a great setup there. Putting the pieces together after the cutting is fiddly but doable. A friend has been helping me with that (thanks Pat!).

Four guidelines to become anti-fragile

Notes on this video Nassim Taleb - 4 Rules To Become Antifragile (For A Better Life)

1) Do hard things (Embrace adversities)
Post traumatic growth is possible, rather than Post traumatic stress
"The blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything thrown into it"
- Marcus Aurelius
"I finally got being a good startup founder down to two words - relentlessly resourceful"
- Paul Graham
When luck gives you lemons, you make lemonade

2) Go through life as a Flaneur. My translation of this is Be Adventurous.
Flaneur: Someone who unlike a tourist, makes a decision opportunistically at every step to revise his schedule (or his destination) so he can imbibe things based on new information obtained.

An adventurer likes disorder, has a different mindset than a tourist. Adventurers welcome uncertainty.

If you know in the morning what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead - the more precision, the more dead you are.

3) Develop an anti-education. My translation here is Follow your curiousity and passions
Great scientists like Darwin and Einstein didn't like the education system. It kills creativity. It's better to read a lot of books. Focus on things that are really important to you.
An apprenticeship is more important than an academic education

"Only the autodidacts are free"

4) Develop an anti-fragile life philosopy. My translation here is develop a Stoic philosophy (Marcus Aurelius, Seneca)
Keep the upside; don't be hurt by the downside
A Stoic is someone who transforms:

• Fear into Prudence
• Pain into Information
• Mistakes into Initiation
• Desires into Undertaking