Vacuum Tube LEDs: 21HB5A on a Guilloche Platter

With the Joggy Thing running in LinuxCNC 2.7, touching XY off on the fixture was trivially easy:

LinuxCNC - Sherline Mill - Logitech Gamepad
LinuxCNC – Sherline Mill – Logitech Gamepad

The pips are 100 mm apart at (-50,-50) and (+50,50). Astonishingly, the laser aligner batteries are in fine shape.

I should have protected the platter before drilling all those holes:

Guilloche platter - drilling
Guilloche platter – drilling

All’s well that ends well:

21HB5A - Guilloche platter
21HB5A – Guilloche platter

It looks even better in the dark, although you’d never know it from this picture:

21HB5A - Guilloche platter - dark
21HB5A – Guilloche platter – dark

I wish I could engrave those patterns on already-drilled platters, but dragging a diamond point into a hole can’t possibly end well. I could deploy the Tiny Sandblaster with a vinyl mask, if I had enough artistic eptitude to lay out a good-looking mask.

9 thoughts on “Vacuum Tube LEDs: 21HB5A on a Guilloche Platter

  1. I’m curious, does the pattern end up with any “depth” or 3D-ish appearance to it?

    1. The pressure produced barely a scratch: it’s visible and feel-able, with no depth worth mentioning.

      Any side force on those springy bars deflects the point: it needs a less bendy holder!

  2. Dragging it into a hole is probably fine.. it’s dragging it back out that’s going to hurt. :) I bet you could modify the g-code generator to interrupt the cuts around the known hole locations…

    1. I actually started tweaking the gcmc code to include a list of keep-out circles. A few dozen lines of code later, I realized I’d have to figure out whether each move intersected each circle, compute the intersection(s), then insert lift and drop moves. Shortly thereafter, I checked my stack of defunct hard drives and common sense broke out.

  3. Why not make plugs and press them into holes for the engraving process? Few thou difference shouldn’t be a big deal, it’s just big drops you have to avoid

    1. I deburr the holes, which puts an irregular conical depression around every one. I’m sure a careful epoxy fill would work, but … Contemplating. Junk. Drives.

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