Craft Stick Plant Markers: Laser Fixture

Converting craft sticks into plant markers should be a mass-production process, which means a fixture is in order:

Admittedly, making ten markers at once barely qualifies as “mass production”, but you (well, I) can think of it a proof of concept.

The basic shape comes from a 0.25 mm outset around the measured size of a craft stick (150×18 mm), plus an alignment target:

A good rule of thumb says never do any more work than absolutely necessary, so the rest of the fixture comes from linear arrays replicating the stick slots and targets:

The two strips over on the left (with a common cut down the middle) get glued to the underside of the fixture:

They’re exactly 5 mm apart to bracket one of the knife-edge bars supporting the fixture. The bar is upside-down to put its flat side upward:

Yes, the fixture is made of chipboard, mostly because it’s about the same thickness as a craft stick and it’s cheap & readily available. Each target gets an ink blot to make it more conspicuous; there is also a tiny hole burned through the chipboard at the center to mark the other side for the strips.

Two knife-edge bars (sharp side up) support the sticks near their ends, well out of the cutting path, to prevent scorch marks:

It’s worth noting the knife-edge bars are 5 mm wide and the platform spaces them on 3/8 inch = 9.525 mm centers. Not 10 mm, not 9.5 mm, exactly 3/8 inch. Kinda like the platform leadscrews: a 4 mm lead thread driven by a belt with 0.2 inch pitch. Only in America.

This doodle captures the key dimensions down there in the corner to work out where the strips should go:

Now, to convert names from a garden map into plant markers …