So I’ll be the first to admit I have no idea what I’m doing. Assuming I benefit from a miracle I will eventually be in possession of a laser cut case and it will actually look acceptable.
Ponoko had a spend at least $50 and get a $50 voucher promotion. I’ve spent days moving lines around and changing colors and thickness and deleting stray bits out of it until I couldnt see straight. Tonight I finished a 31 x 15 sized panel. For giggles I put two cases on one panel since it seemed to be the most efficient way of dealing with this. On one panel I used vector engraving for the labels. On the other I used vector engraving with a raster fill for fancier looking fonts. I’m curious how both look and intend to try to fill them with paint to see if they look ok with the various sizes represented.
I’ve thrown together paper models trying to confirm spacing and suitable sizes/dimension and had wanted to try to create a model using some paper coated foam board but I ran out of time. The promotion ended tonight and I was running out of hours and decided to just give up and hope all my calculations and re-calculations and CAD drawings and everything else I’ve tried were correct. The order only covers part of the case and I still need to generate a left side panel in addition to the right side one. The front, bottom, top, and rear are all covered already. I have a second project I was going to include in the excess space but I figure I should wait for the first order to come in and see how it turned out. If anything is horribly wrong I’ll try to get it made again using the voucher but otherwise I’ll just continue on if it came out ok.
First laser cut job sent to Ponoko
The top left is the raster filled engraved layout. The next one to the right is the non filled one. Next, the bottom piece. The two items on the bottom right are “inserts” for the LCD area. I sized them out for the 7 inch touch screen with the two panels able to be “popped in” to the opening to hold a 4×20 New Haven Display mounted into the piece.
Supposedly if you make a rectangle at say 50mm and then make a second rectangle somewhere else at 50.2mm this .2mm is referred to as “kerf” or something. This sizing allows you to friction hold a plastic piece in an opening…. I figured I’d try it out to see how well that works/doesnt.
Continuing to the left on the bottom there is a cut rear piece on the bottom with a slotted front plate above it to allow air to be pulled through to the fan opening cut into the rear. Next are two right side pieces. One has a position cut out for a termocouple connection and then the other does not have one. Finally on the far left bottom is a second rear with no cut outs and a front panel with the slots cut into it.
Once I decide if I totally botched this I will either redo the job or continue with the right side plate and any adjustments for other sides that I think I need. Then I will find some acrylic square “rod” to glue into the corners. Some of the positions will be drilled for mounting the top/bottom/rear and the others will just be glued. I intend to be able to unscrew the bottom, rear, and/or top while the other edges will be glued in place. I just went this route since I wasn’t sure on the screws I’d end up using and wanted to see how well things turned out before I would go back and laser cut any of the pieces with more holes in them or whatever else I want to do to it.
The package arrived today from Ponoko. I am working on a follow up blog to document what it was that I received. You don’t often get to see someone’s horror story/train wreck of a laser cutting job so I figured I’d share.
Surprisingly it does not look THAT awful but it really is bad and probably would have been much more awful had I not had black acrylic chosen. If I had chosen a lighter color I probably would have had a WHOLE LOT MORE black than I wanted :-/
Apparently…. my prototype is going to show up more in the column of “horrifying”… I just received a notice from Ponoko that there were issues noticed while the design was being made that resulted in some areas running over top one another multiple times. Not just one or two times but 10+ times. No idea what is going on but I guess I need to start looking for dupes of various lines.
Ugh
oh man… this is totally going to suck. I just looked at the file again for some of the circles and other items mentioned and the most critical sections of the whole thing are probably going to be totally trashed…. With only a couple parts as exceptions it’s probably not going to be usable at all.
While the thought of the money flushed down the toilet is rather upsetting what is even worse to me is the amount of time it’s going to be before I get a second job put through to correct for what went wrong…
*sigh*
After 12 days (and 4 hours ago from this writing) Ponoko reports that my job has been set for making and then as of 9 minutes ago it has been declared made and packed and is now being shipped. Since it is Friday I guess this means Monday I will have the results. HOPEFULLY there is nothing horrifying when it gets here. Everything looked ok in the drawing app. *Crosses fingers*
New blog post coming when it arrives and then a final one once the rest of the items arrive and it gets assembled.
We are now about 10 days since the Ponoko order. From most of the information available it takes about 14 days before they actually make the order. It then takes 1 day for my order to arrive based on where I am physically located vs. Ponoko US. I’ve ordered a variety of plastic parts for gluing corners together and they are expected 5/31, 6/1 and 6/4. I should probably have my order from Ponoko IF they proceed to making as I expect and ship it sometime between 6/5 and 6/8. Hopefully that will be the case so I can have a weekend to mess around with it.
Drills shipped for Friday delivery. Nothing on the countersink cutters yet.
This past weekend I ordered some plastic square rod, glue, applicators for the glue, precut shapes for some corners, plastic drills, and countersinking attachments for the drills. The plastic rods and corners and glue related items have shipped today. Still waiting on the drills and countersink items to ship.
As of a few minutes ago the Materials Reviewed and Materials ready for making status became completed.
Today I noticed that on my credit card statement the credit card company charged a Foreign Transaction fee. The reason for this is that Ponoko is based out of New Zealand. As a result the money is converted from USD to whatever NZ’s currency is and we are thus charged a fee for it. Ponoko reported last year and again early this year on their support forum that they were working on converting US orders to charge in the USA but apparently this still has not taken place yet.
Today I received an email with the voucher.
After about 1.5 hours Ponoko now shows the design files as having been reviewed as well as ready for making. As other updates happen I’ll post them as comments.