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Fun with LASERS
Nov. 14th, 2008 11:32 pmA few months ago, I posted a side elevation of a new iBook photo frame I was working on. Today I finally got the nexus of my time, laser cutter time and motivation, and headed over to the Architecture workshop to use their amazing Epilog 36EX Laser Cutter. Woo! Cut out the pieces for both the ibook photo frame and the LCD box for the LCD I bought in Tokyo last year. The thing is REALLY amazing. There is no way I could come even close to the output of this machine. It can do 1/10th of a millimetre accuracy apparently, and I can believe that..
When I got back to the office, people were curious about what I'd been up to, so I did a basic dry fit of the plastic pieces to show people. Everyone seemed genuinely amazed I designed this myself :P
Spent most of this evening getting all the laptop parts of it together.. I still needed to drill holes to hold the PCBs and other parts. Have got most of that sorted out. Will scan them in and put them into the outlines for the holes, as I plan to make a few more of these, and saving the hour or so it takes to measure and drill the holes when I could get the laser to do it would be great.
I have been pleased at how well everything has fit together. I got one of the holes in a slightly wrong position and it stopped the inverter cable, but was able to grind that out, and another one in a slightly off place, but it didn't block the cable and you can't see it at all, but I've still corrected both of those too.
My only big fail was putting speaker cutouts on it.. and not having space underneath them to install the speakers. Whups. I'll put another hole between the layers so it'll still work out. Yes, I haven't explained it well, but you'll see when I get it finished.
Still need to tidy up the wiring, install the speakers and possibly an Airport Antenna, make a top panel (for the USB/Firewire/Network/etc ports), and install an OS on it (possibly replace the hard drive first.. it doesn't sound healthy), then take it all apart and remove the protective film from the pieces of plastic, before putting it all back together again with gloves on :P
Oh, and lastly, I put the front plate on upside down before I took this photo, but that's easy to fix.
When I got back to the office, people were curious about what I'd been up to, so I did a basic dry fit of the plastic pieces to show people. Everyone seemed genuinely amazed I designed this myself :P
Spent most of this evening getting all the laptop parts of it together.. I still needed to drill holes to hold the PCBs and other parts. Have got most of that sorted out. Will scan them in and put them into the outlines for the holes, as I plan to make a few more of these, and saving the hour or so it takes to measure and drill the holes when I could get the laser to do it would be great.
I have been pleased at how well everything has fit together. I got one of the holes in a slightly wrong position and it stopped the inverter cable, but was able to grind that out, and another one in a slightly off place, but it didn't block the cable and you can't see it at all, but I've still corrected both of those too.
My only big fail was putting speaker cutouts on it.. and not having space underneath them to install the speakers. Whups. I'll put another hole between the layers so it'll still work out. Yes, I haven't explained it well, but you'll see when I get it finished.
Still need to tidy up the wiring, install the speakers and possibly an Airport Antenna, make a top panel (for the USB/Firewire/Network/etc ports), and install an OS on it (possibly replace the hard drive first.. it doesn't sound healthy), then take it all apart and remove the protective film from the pieces of plastic, before putting it all back together again with gloves on :P
Oh, and lastly, I put the front plate on upside down before I took this photo, but that's easy to fix.
