Blockface Grips From Warped Acrylic

This is definitely not recommended practice:

It’s the sheet of 3/8 inch = 9 mm vintage acrylic that Came With The House™ and what you see is the relatively unwarped result of several months of pressure. The wood sheet in front puts the left edge mostly flat on the platform, with the steel disk weighting the rear end down; the front end sticks out through the laser’s pass-through door.

The general idea was to cut a rectangle that would be flat enough for the shapes I actually needed:

They’re grips for a set of Blockface printing shapes. The alert reader will note the rectangle sits atop three spikes, not the usual four; it was flat enough for the purpose, not actually flat.

The OMTech laser claims to be 60 W, but has an over-amped 50 W tube that’s barely adequate for the task. The cuts required two passes:

• 5 mm/s @ 90% cuts almost all the way through
• 10 mm/s @ 90% clears the cut enough to have some shapes drop out and the others be easily pushed through

Cranking the tube current that high isn’t recommended practice, either, but sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

All’s well that ends well, though:

I also cut the Blockface shapes from double-faced adhesive foam and stamp pad rubber:

To my utter astonishment, the rubber cuts did not smell like a tire fire and the neighbors did not rise up in arms.

I cut several sets of grips / foam / rubber and sent them off for final assembly. The recipient seems delighted with the results and has been hand-printing up a storm.