pouët.net

Exactly, that's the 101 :)

True. I used mostly rubber spacers provided by the glue manufacturer because they'd peel off as easy as the plastic on a tft, but they're much easier to use with bigger objects. The leftover bit from the punchout would probably be useless at that size though, so spacers are probably still the best option for a 2 sheet design. Having watchmaker skills would be a big bonus here I suppose ;)

An easier (but slightly more expensive) way out would be to cut another punchout that fits inside the first (inlay?) and has the letters removed. Assembly would then be like 1) glue main punchout onto baseplate 2) glue thin punchout inside main punchout 3) glue letters inside thin punchout 4) sandpaper/coating/etc.

Ofcourse you can take this much further with more layers, different metals (combined), paint, coating, rust, sandblasting, etc etc. I think the most complicated thing we made was a wallmounted logo for a lawfirm which had about 80 layers between 4 and 40mm, with a pyramid shape made of 40mm sheets sticking out of the wall diagonally and dozens of pieces of punchout to glue. The metal alone was a couple thousand euros on that one and it took a week to build but the buyer was really happy with it- until metal thieves tore it down a couple of weeks later :(


I really don't know much about wood myself but I know a family who run a traditional furniture construction/repair business about a mile from where I live. They're usually happy to talk about their craft so I could drop by for some expert advice if that'd help? If they can't help at least the mocca from their coffeemachine is awesome so I don't mind having excuses to make a visit ;)

Another thought- With these wooden fobs, how desirable is consistency really? Upto a point it's necessary ofcourse (no uncoated spots etc), but the cool thing about wood (visually) is the natural patterns, the appearance being unique for each item. You want that to contrast with the uniform precision laser cut, and applying the coating rougher/more inconsistent might actually emphasize that contrast more than a really clean finish. Just my 2c though, I fully realize these are matters of taste and as an admitted non-keyfob-user, my opinion is arguably irrelevant anyway :)

Well, the Nectarine ones are indeed a bit bulky, but the Revision keyfob fits very nicely in a pocket.

I actually have all the supplies now to get going on a non-dip process that should enable me to do a bunch in one go. It's not going to be super professional, but should hopefully help them to stand up better to the elements. I just have to get get started on the process. Between all the designs I have something like 500 of these things.

By consistency I basically meant what you said: no spots left uncoated. The process I hope to use is basically spraying them, waiting, repeating, doing backsides, etc. so they're still all going to be slightly different. I wanted to avoid a drip process so I don't have to tend to them to prevent globs in corners as they hang dry.


I thought about name-dropping. :) The SceneSat rectangles are slightly shorter and skinner, perhaps you might like them a bit better than the Nectarine ones.

So I had a thought, and this seems as good a place as any to bring it up ... nobody has really asked for any group-related fobs and I've sort of exhausted my pool of funds for self-sold stuff like the stuff posted in this thread, but what if I made a bunch out of square ones out of acrylic with a ring hole in one corner and nothing else?

I know a plain colored (or clear "coke bottle") squares sounds kinda boring, but with a sharpie you or some artist at a party could have a go at drawing something on it.

If you want to make it permanent, wait until it dries, take it home and spray some lacquer on it. I could also lightly sand them ahead of time to make it easier for the link to adhere more permanently.

Any thoughts on if this is worth expending anything toward?

acrylic paints + water +lacquer = beautiful watercolor keychains.

( ;

yeah, but it's more likely people would have sharpies at a party than that, unless someone explicitly brought some. ;)

But if someone wanted some for a well prepared excursion to a demo party ... :P

I figure it should now be public knowledge that my services I can offer, as seen in this thread and elsewhere, are commissionable:

http://kennewick.asmcbain.net/#lasers

I do have a day job, but I will try to get back promptly to any inquiries. At this time I cannot afford to do "pro bono" production runs due to the upset in my own budget as a result of the key fob runs for Revision 2014 and eventual travel expenses to the event. Therefore please have a reasonable budget in mind.

I can potentially work with other materials than listed on my site, but that is a list of what I have worked with and already have the ability to easily acquire for projects.

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Small text:
Sorry for digging up this thread without anything interesting to show off. Please forgive me.

Just a thought, perhaps a silly one, that went through my head on all this ...

I didn't give it a lot of thought, but just sort of figured on cash when selling these at Revision. Is it worth it to anyone to offer the ability to take Visa/MasterCard while at the party place?

I wouldn't have anything as slick as Square (I don't have one and they can't be used outside the activation country anyway), but the idea itself would be quite doable and securely if anyone wanted. Just my thought based on the fact that except for trips to places I tend not to have a lot of loose cash available. While these won't cost much, people might prefer to preserve their cash for use at the kiosk near the entrance, the food stands outside, and the local Rewe.

(I would also post/ask in the Revision 2014 thread, but I can wait to do the shameless self-promotion plug closer to the party. ;)

Don't worry, cash should be absolutely fine, it's Germany so nobody expects to be able to pay with a card outside official shops. At Revision, I always have at least 50-100 euro cash in the pocket for beers, taxi, food and "random opportunities" such as your keyfobs, there's no 24h ATM nearby so it just makes sense to carry such amounts and since there is basically 0% risk of pickpockets inside or nearby the venue I've personally never had any security worries.

BTW, I've been fooling around with water slide decals recently, with decent results so far, see here for some pictures of my first few released products. I have no idea if I can make my decals tough enough to withstand the wear and tear a keyfob goes through but I think it could be a really good test. If it works, it would open up possibilities for highly customized keyfobs and perhaps other objects. Is that something you'd be interested in as well?

Well that's basically what I figured but I learned from my online store for the first Nectarine batch that not everyone who wanted one wanted to do it through the store. (like how some websites offer their own thing and PayPal) So I figured I'd at least see ...


I've seen the thread, seems interesting. Key fobs do go through a lot, and I have some interesting commentary on that ... but anyway one of the things I can do to make them hold up better is polyurethane, not really something that applies there (I think?). I also have saved all the pictures people send me of their worn out (or still going!) fobs.

I think that would be interesting, and I wonder how well they hold on to acrylic. That's a non-wood material I have access to. I haven't made a lot with it, compared to my wood cutting stuff.

Here's something I did in acrylic that is too big to be a key fob, but could hang off of a bag or something. (I made it to get the idea out of my head; practicality would require thinner acrylic than I had access to.)

Oh also, I made three of those somethings. :) One already went to someone, so I can add it to my list of things to bring to Revision if you want the second one. All you need is 2.5 size metric hex key ("Allen wrench"). The inside space is just under an inch on each side. Making that area larger might have been nice, but it's too late now.

(One of the three I'll keep; it will eventually get used for something ...)

I've basically just fooled around with various types of acrylic varnish, that was the obvious first direction because the decals have to be coated with it anyway. It'd basically be PU on top of varnish, I've used both but never on top of eachother, it's worth a try I suppose :)

I'm also going to try polyolefin heat shrink tubes and sheets. I've ordered samples from China which should arrive sometime this month. I've seen this stuff being used in construction projects and for tube type objects I'm pretty sure it will give a major durability improvement, I'm hoping I can apply sheets to differently shaped objects as well- but that's completely unknown territory.

That clear acrylic object looks damn interesting. If the surface is as perfectly flat as it seems applying the decals should be a breeze. The fact that it is screwed together presents the opportunity to wrap the decals, so no foil edges on the outside. Maybe it's nice to use decals on the inside, in several layers, to create fake 3d effects (shadow of the beast scrolling-ish), I'd love to have a go at that. It's good that it's small, this will keep material costs low and for decal work, smaller is easier anyway :)

So yeah, please do bring the object to Revision, I'd love to see where I can take this :)

unispecified handcrafted object compo!

I'm not sure if that's a good idea really, there's already a phenomenon called wild compo and if a handcrafted object isn't convincing enough for that setting it probably just doesn't belong in a demoparty compo. It can still be pretty damn cool though, so I'm not too bothered about the whole thing ;)

Damn, now that this thread has been revived, I remember that I totally forgot to bring all those keyfobs to tUM to give away. Sorry, AMcBain. :\ Better write me a message a day or two before Revision so I don't forget it again. ;)

Noted.


The screws were intended to be flush with the surface so they didn't stick out but I didn't want to drill any further inwards for the counter-sink holes as my first attempt broke all the way through. The screws are small enough I didn't want to risk messing them up with the hackerspace's chop-saw and I only had just enough. It later turned out from one of the guys at the hackerspace that I could have just gone to Tacoma Screw to get them for cheaper, and they had an store in the town just over from where I live. If I'd known that, I would have skipped out on the local hardware store. Bah. :)

That layered idea sounds pretty cool.

I can also have some acrylic "blanks" cut, if you'd like. The acrylic they have is nominally 4.5mm thick and in a variety of colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, black, "coke bottle" clear). Just need to know what size to make them and where any holes should go if wanted. Holes can be drilled after the fact using a drill press, like shown with the counter-sink holes in the acrylic object I linked above. However holes cut with the laser are going to look better. (Like the fourth hole which I didn't bore out for screws to leave something for a string to hang it by.)


TRSAC had an art category that would have allowed something like that. I almost worked out a 3D skinless bone-frame shark sub with periscope. If you've ever seen those kits for dinosaurs where you poke out the bones and they fit together via notches? Was going to be sort of the same idea. Never got around to mocking anything up, though. I think it was around the same time I also had the scenecompos.net awards made and so had other things on my mind.

It seems though that while many parties have wild categories, people are more interested in the hardware/software hacks or the compo rules are worded to that end. The only Revision compo from last year that would have allowed something like the shark sub idea is the photo compo, as long as your entry was an interesting photograph of it.


Heh, I don't even remember how many I send your way. Wasn't too many. I can remind you before I get on the plane to Revision on Wednesday (PDT), as that's the last time I'll be able to communicate until I land in Frankfurt on the Thursday before. (Going off of the assumption I'll continue the trend of not paying for expensive in-flight WiFi.) I also won't mind if somehow you end up giving them away before then. Revision is a few months away.

you know what I want to give out for prizes?

Stuff like this:
https://chocedge.com/

keyfobs and waterslided flasks are very awesome (although I would prefer to go for something like this http://www.gogenlab.com/spree/products/7086/product/B6540_x600_jpg_600x600_q85.jpg?1320900877 instead of metal for a variety of reasons)

I don't suppose anyone is working on similar things? (Says the person who tended in the past to give out fudge or cookies as @party prizes, heh)

[Possibly a thread derail, if so, move it.]

actually, this is a thread derail, ignore. Looking forward to seeing you both at Revision!

Mmm. Chocolate.


Why not metal? There's a place called Liberty Bottles out here in Yakima that makes metal water bottles, all in the USA. If you read their FAQ they're also incredibly green. Recycled materials, even their own, lower energy usage at the factory ... They do custom bottles but I don't know if there's any minimum ordering quantities or whatnot. (Though the existing ones seem $19 a piece. Oof.)

Also, no worries, Pouet is full of thread diversions. Looking forward to being there too. :)

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On other things, some time this spring I will be heading out to the hackerspace where I make these things. I don't have much left of the 5mm plywood I got to do this all stuff, but I'm hoping to get out some "one offs" that I'd prototyped over my Christmas vacation. So there might be some photos posted here in a while of two demogroup fobs. (I'd actually already made another site-specific one last summer/fall but I only showed it to a few people and didn't publicize it. You can find photos of it.) A few in the two groups from this round already know. I hope they come out as cool as the mockups look. (I figure I have to put up the final results after sharing the mockups of one on the Nectarine oneliner and other on the #scenesat IRC channel. Pretty public, if you ask me.)

None of those will be made in other than group-sized quantities or less as they're not intended for general sale. So if you're after "collecting them all" you might have to bribe a group member, and I'm not so sure they'd want to give up something that special. ;)

Also I don't plan on making any more such designs, but any group or person is free to contact me through my demogroup site to work out a deal to buy something. :)

and AMcBain is making @party prizes folks . . . so

Remote entries accepted, presence rewarded : D

although not all of them, we have other plans as well ... including the annual plea to

I guess the cat is out of the bag. :)

Well, that cat anyway. The @party thread seems to indicate there's another one somewhere.


I like her stuff. Pretty cool things. A tad on the expensive side :( but totally worth it. I do have two Vorodo, one in white strong and flexible which I keep at work and a black glass one at home. They don't offer black glass anymore, but for the wallet watchers that's probably a good thing as I recall it being something like over 3 to 4x the cost of the plastic version. I don't think I'd have bought it today, just the plastic one.

Click the image to view a larger version (2592x1944 @ 1.13MB). This was from back in August 2011.

I have since solved and then restickered that cube to cover more of the parts, and two new ones* with the same treatment will be coming with me to Revision 2014. I think it just happened to show up in the mail around the same time as the two Vorodo. Otherwise I can't think of a reason why I'd photograph them together. That Vorodo is probably as close as I get to having what the purists might define as art.

Oh and the cube is incredibly easy to solve. Make yourself feel smarter if you can't do a Rubik's cube. ;) Worked for moi.

* Yeah, yeah, that's only one. I have to get around to doing the other one. It'll have non-reflective colors.

A bit of an update on random stuff ... I had thought I'd have more to post pictures of by now, but no such luck. The hackerspace I visit's small laser is currently offline until they can get a replacement laser tube. The one that was in it broke due to accidental lack of proper cooling, and the replacement was broken when it arrived. Hopefully they'll get a non-broken new tube installed in another week or two and I can go back.

So in the mean time, I'll post what I have which I waited to show until I had enough for this post to not be a pitiful equivalent to doing "*bump*".


Wooden Titan fobs:
It's generally been known that I have a design for a Titan key fob, not for general sale, though the results using their big laser as a test proved "oh dear"-worthy. Their smaller laser, when operational has a 2.5" (focal length) lens, and is quite resolute at details. Their laser with the larger working area has a lens with a longer focal length that is better for cutting [thicker surfaces] and, with exceptions, rather fat-fingers engraved details. They come out fuzzy. Depending on the design, this can be acceptable as I have used it for the Revision key fob designs.

At any rate, I borrowed a simplified version of the original back design and uploaded it to shapeways. The results of it and the wooden key fob tests are pictured below.



The left image was manually brightened. The right image is the flipside of the items, and is a bit flatter as it is presumably the side against the build surface. The colors are fairly close to reality, though I have been unable to capture the colors of 3D printed stuff from shapeways perfectly yet (or so I feel). Sorry for taking the pictures with a tuber ... no, potato? Or so the meme seems to go. I'm about as well up on those as the nearest monkey.

The top wooden fob shows the back-side, with an accidental etch. However, I kinda like it. If the engraving on the small laser doesn't turn out, then I may use this variant instead. It is surprisingly sharp for the big laser. The second and third versions are engraved versions of the same, as intended. The laser flips state for overlapped sections such that if two shapes overlap, it won't engrave the overlap. In this case, I had up to three overlapping shapes (three sets of concentric circles). The third one is just a deeper engraving attempt of the second.The result was not as good as I imagined so I dropped down to two sets of concentric circles as seen in the fourth. As the etching one was an accident, I don't know what it looks like with the three sets of concentric circles etched. Madness, presumably.

At any rate, overlapping concentric circles certainly isn't a Titan-only effect. It's seen in a lot of demos. However it's part of one of the images on their site from Overdrive, which I tried to replicate. The part that makes this a Titan key fob is the front (shown in the right image). This is an attempt to replicate some pixel-art logo I found on Alien^pdx's spreadshirt store. I did have to trace the outlines by hand as an automatic image tracing algorithm would result in useless crap. (Ok, Inkscape's did. I didn't try anyone else's.) The idea was to engrave the letters, then the red bands as a second pass engraving. The top fob is a lighter engraving with the bands turned off, the second the first one I did with a deep engraving and the bands (which can be barely seen in the photo)*, and the third with the bands engraved first followed by a light engraving of the letters. They all sucked. When the smaller laser is operational, I'll have another go. The letter bands might also change to be merely an unengraved section (with lines on either side) if I cannot get the double engraving to look nice. I didn't make any more because I wouldn't be proud of giving these away.

* They look like a small flat-head screwdriver was put against the back of the engraved sections and hit once with a hammer. A small noticeable indent upon close inspection, but otherwise unremarkable.

If you wish to buy the 3D prints of the concentric circles as seen in the photos, it is available on shapeways. I do make a very small profit on each sale, if that matters to anyone. However all transaction details and fulfillment are handled by shapeways.


Nectarine plastic fobs:
Riffing on the above with the 3D printing, a while back I had tried to create a Nectarine key fob out of plastic. Again, shapeways seemed a quick way to do it with decent results that didn't require working out molds or figuring out how to pay for the minimum run. Since I'm not great at creating useful 3D models, I used their "2D to 3D" uploader which accepted black and white images, allowed you to specify the size, and optionally apply a base-plate.The results were, well, crap:



The large text looks kinda chunky and the small "etched" text filled itself in because the holes were too small. The base-plate was also solid so you couldn't have any holes all the way through with it.

More recently when I was doing the concentric circles model shown in the last section I noticed shapeway's 2D uploader had changed removing the base-plate option but allowing grayscale images. Black is full height, white no material, and gray a percentage of the height. This allowed me to create a new version with a base and a hole. I also took the opportunity to make the "etched" text larger so it wouldn't collapse in on itself as badly. As a bonus since I didn't need to make the image only black and white, the grays helped smooth out the edges of the larger text.

Here's an example end result in white:


The "etched" text is a bit deep, but you can read it, so I decided to quit fiddling while I was ahead. These fobs are similar in width and height to the original wooden ones but only 2mm thick and one-sided (a trade off for using the "2D to 3D" uploader and making them really thin). They're slightly flexible and rather strong, though I wouldn't intentionally try to bend one in half. They should stand up well to the rigor of a key ring / pocket.

I will not have any of these to sell at Revision 2014, just the wooden ones. As they will be on sale online through Shapeways they can be had at any time. However as I am not planning to make any more wooden Nectarine ones at this time beyond those already made to sell at Revision 2014, you will still want to go get a wooden one for posterity and the uniqueness of it. (and "the cool factor")

I do not plan to make shapeways versions of the Revision key fob, even though I now could, for reasons of keeping that one more special as I have previously (and still) promised that it will only be available at the party. If I ever decide to make any, it will be after I discontinue the wooden ones and certainly not for Revision 2014. However it would be trivial to make your own using their "2D to 3D" uploader. Just measure your existing Revision key fob for dimensions.