Tuesday, February 19, 2013

A Cricut building

I was working on my house that I was just winging it on and was trying to score roof tiles and siding lines thinking it is a pain in the a** when I had the thought "I sure wish I had a laser cutter" but alas I do not have $2000+ just burning a hole in my pocket (get this a 3d printer $400 a laser cutter $2000+ wtf is up with that? I don't need a 40 watt laser to cut through metal I am cutting 1/32" thick bass wood) so I was thinking again and remembered that I bought my wife a Cricut machine years ago that collects dust, hmmmmm.
I drug it out of mothballs and tried setting it on its most shallow setting and scored a bunch of lines, then set the knife for a deeper cut and then had it cut the sides of the house, I had to set it for multiple cuts but it worked like a dream. Well for that, tiny details turned out badly, more on that in a bit.
As you can see the fine detail cuts did not work so well, the blade pivots when it cuts so that it is always facing the right direction when cutting but that means rounded not so nice cuts, like in the upper right those are supposed to be stair step parts, not so much...

Here is the sides scored and cut out, for this it was amazing, I was not worried about the windows having rounded corners as there will be a window frame around it.


Here are the pictures of it glued together, sorry about the pics being a bit blurry.


I of course could get the fine detail cuts with a laser cutter but......
On the net they have for sale a 2 watt laser diode, the size of it would be about the size of what is in a laser pointer but quite a bit more powerful, it is $70.
There is a video of it cutting through a toothpick, a toothpick is harder and thicker than the material that I am using.... so since the cutting blades fit inside an aluminum holder that is about an inch thick, my thoughts are, buy another holder for $15 drill it out enough for the diode and a lens and I might just get my laser cutter and it would not alter the Cricut at all as it would just be modifying the replacable holder and not actually altering the machine.
More on that dream and the house later.

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