The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • Slotted Beetles

    Continuing the theme of slot resizing & overall scaling:

    Beetle Collection
    Beetle Collection

    The original model has 3.0 mm slots and arrived in CorelDraw format requiring a bank shot off InkScape to create an SVG file suitable for LightBurn. After the usual cleanup & optimization, I applied global rescaling to match the available material.

    The smallest beetles use 1.9 mm chipboard:

    Beetle - 1.9mm chipboard
    Beetle – 1.9mm chipboard

    Everything is held together by ordinary wood glue, squeezed together for a few moments until the two parts no longer slide around.

    One layer of 3.9 mm corrugated cardboard:

    Beetle - 1x cardboard
    Beetle – 1x cardboard

    The fancy gold & hologram decorations come from what’s surely non-laser-safe PSA vinyl sheets, cut by offsetting the top layer shapes inward a reasonable amount. The eyes come from random colored paper or painted chipboard.

    Two layers of cardboard add up to 8 mm:

    Beetle - 2x cardboard
    Beetle – 2x cardboard

    That’s purple paper left over from the layered paper quilt blocks and, obviously, my glue stick hand is weak.

    Three layers of cardboard makes each part half an inch thick:

    Beetle - 3x cardboard
    Beetle – 3x cardboard

    That bad boy needs black stripes on yellow in the universal “Fear me! I am a seriously dangerous creature!” danger marking.

    The layers are laid out with crossed corrugations to make the part less bendy, which is more necessary for the relatively slender legs.

    It’s two feet long and chewed up the better part of two Home Depot Extra Large moving boxes:

    Beetle - LightBurn layout - 3x cardboard
    Beetle – LightBurn layout – 3x cardboard

    The gridded rectangle represents the 700×500 mm laser platform.

    The little ones are kinda cute and not too threatening:

    Beetle Collection - 1.9mm
    Beetle Collection – 1.9mm

    Yes, that is one of the Goldbug Variations.