But the road ahead still feels too long!

For anyone who has ever used a dictionary, you know, that enormous bound tome with the hard cover that perched on a shelf above your Smith Corona, you’ll never see my face anywhere near the word “patient” nor any of its synonyms ????. Even I use the digital dictionary now but that’s another story.

Cameron DID make important progress this weekend and I even have a few videos of the test runs with the air assist. Remember the little fires we had last week before the compressor/air assist was installed/connected? Well, no more fire because he completed the air plumbing for it. One of the things I didn’t know about it was that the force of the air flow can be adjusted, depending upon the job you’re doing. So the air pressure, along with the speed at which the laser head travels on the gantry, the lens used for the laser, the distance from the laser head to the job you’re cutting/etching, and of course the percentage of power/amount of wattage you’re using are all variables when doing a job. It’s nifty to have so many ways to adjust the machine but it also adds to the complexity of dialing in all of the settings you use for a particular medium.

We tested with paper again because the exhaust, which is something else Cameron made a lot of progress on this weekend, is not installed. It is surprising how much smoke and aroma these small cuts with paper produce. We also don’t have the acrylic in place to enclose it which would go a long way toward minimizing the bonfire smell. Oh, Cameron also downloaded the software that will drive the machine. The little test shapes we cut were made in it. They’re not visually exciting; we are all going to have to wait a while for visually compelling outcomes, but we are lurching toward the end of the build. The videos are below. As a reminder, I’m being told you have to go to the WordPress site in order to watch the videos as they do not show up in your email.

So no more fire, lots of smoke for such little bits of paper, and LOTS to learn! Jonathan Frost, the architect of the plans for this build, shared a test pattern with us. Apparently the software will automate the currently manual manipulation of the settings all in one blast once we are set up for that so it will be faster and easier to find the desired settings for various materials.

I’m unsure of Cameron’s schedule this week so I don’t know if I can hope for much more forward motion until next weekend. The process for the exhaust set up is a bit of a humdinger because he had to construct an insert for the window behind the machine to mount the ducting to which will have to be suspended from the ceiling. He designed, cut, and primed that insert today. There is some wiring for the exhaust too that needs to be done before it is operational. If anything fun happens before next weekend I’ll definitely post it here!