Frosted Snowflakes

After the first two snowflake coasters, it finally penetrated my thick skill that putting a 1 mm hole in the flake cut from the center of the plywood would convert it into a decorative window hanging:

Snowflake Hanger - plywood
Snowflake Hanger – plywood

Admittedly, I may be using the word “decorative” in a manner you had not previously encountered, but work with me on this.

Cutting a similar flake from transparent acrylic looks better:

Snowflake Hanger - blue acrylic
Snowflake Hanger – blue acrylic

Transparent acrylic turned out to be, well, too transparent, so I set up a LightBurn layout to “engrave” a light frosting on the flake before cutting it out:

Snowflake Hangers - engraving in situ
Snowflake Hangers – engraving in situ

That worked for all subsequent flakes, but I had to do something about the first few flakes. After realizing that the time to engrave an object depends only on its width, I set up a rectangle with the proper parameters, snugged two forlorn flakes next to each other, and fired the laser:

Snowflake Hangers - retroactive engraving
Snowflake Hangers – retroactive engraving

I thought using cardboard was a Good Idea™ for a stable backing, but lightly vaporizing the top layer produced an unbelievable amount of filth:

Snowflake Hangers - frosted
Snowflake Hangers – frosted

I had to scrub those poor flakes with dish detergent and a toothbrush to get them even close to their former pristine state; the blue one may never recover.

Anyhow, frosted flakes look good if you don’t look closely:

Snowflake Hangers - frosted
Snowflake Hangers – frosted

The grid pattern comes from the window screen in direct sunlight; the vertical bars are DIY BirdSavers.

The LightBurn layout produces 120 mm coasters to fit my 20 ounce mugs:

Snowflake Coaster 120 mm - LB Layout
Snowflake Coaster 120 mm – LB Layout

You get two hanging flakes: one plain plywood and one frosted acrylic!

The LightBurn SVG layout as a GitHub Gist:

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