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Affinity Photo

Let me start by saying that I’ve used Photoshop for the past thirty years. That’s three decades of using an application. I actually cannot think of an application I’ve been using longer than that. My Photoshop abilities probably helped me get my first real job. That said, my days with Photoshop might be numbered.

As you may know, the world is moving to 64 bit computing. Apple’s latest OS will no longer support 32 bit applications. Since I am not a fan of renting software, I still run Adobe Photoshop CS5 on my Mac OS X 10.12 and 10.13 machines. In 10.14 it will not run. A friend of mine at Adobe told me to “join the cloud” and that I would see lots of new and amazing features, but to be honest, with what I use Photoshop for these days, I don’t need the new and amazing features…

So I’ve got a copy of Affinity Photo, and I’ve been using it, and it’s pretty good, and at some point I’ll dump Photoshop completely (probably when I upgrade to 10.14) though I’ll still use Photoshop if working at places that use it. (And yeah, I rarely trade PSD files with others, though if I need to, Affinity Photo can read & write PSD files.)

I tried Pixelmator years ago but it never really grabbed me and made me feel like it could be my everyday editor, but I’ve actually been very impressed with Affinity Photo. It’s close enough to Photoshop but has its own personality. There are a few things I’m still getting used to, but I am trying to use it anytime I would normally launch Photoshop in an effort to train myself.

With all new software (let alone something you’ve used for decades) it’s often a matter of getting used to things that are slightly different. Like using Windows when you’re used to a Mac, or Canon when you have a Nikon… I’m getting to memorize some of the key commands, and I find a few things annoying, like not putting the focus on the first value in a dialog so I need to remember to hit the tab key before I start typing. Little things, nothing big… The important part is, I can do nearly everything I want to (or need to) do with Affinity Photo that I would have done with Adobe Photoshop.

While I am a huge fan of open source, I’ll also pay a reasonable price for non-open source software if it fits my needs and there is not a viable alternative in the open source world.

If 2020 has done anything so far, it’s introduced me to a lot of new software (and services) through my various jobs and projects this year. I’ll probably post a bit more about software in the future, as it’s been a long time since that’s been a regular feature around here.

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Multicolored Laser Etching

If you want a true to life banana you can’t just laser etch something, you need to go that extra kilometer to make it multicolor. (Of course real bananas need not apply.)

I didn’t go large this time, I went small… How small? Here’s a quarter for scale. Oddly enough, I did not find a banana in the house to use for scale, as they’ve all bean eaten, or frozen, so a quarter will have to do.

I etched some dayglow green acrylic using LightBurn and the RasterLaser upgraded with a Cohesion3D board…

Here’s a plain old green banana that has been laser etched. Look how lifeless and colorless it appears! It’s almost downright unappealing. I dare say we should consider slipping some color into place. It’s probably what Warhol would do.

I took some good old Speedball block printing ink and with my finger (inside a nitrile glove) rubbed ink across the surface. I then took some paper towel and wiped it off. It stayed in the etched part pretty good. Good enough for this first test anyway…

Here’s our multicolored banana with some edge lighting. I should try proper acrylic edge-lighting to see what the results are…

Here’s a view of the edge without extra lighting. This is 3mm acrylic. I’m thinking next time I’ll try additional coats of ink with time in between to dry.

Here’s another photo of the banana with a quarter, but the quarter is out of focus and in the foreground because it feels forelorn because it knows it is not a banana and will never be a banana, and for that, it mourns silently.

Enjoy your banana!

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Ball Feeder Mechanism

Here’s this week’s progress on the wax ball feeder mechanism. These are actually 2D files that were laser cut, but I sort of like the look of making them 2.5D so you can see the dimensionality.

Oh, to make the 3D render I exported a DXF file from Inkscape, load it into OpenSCAD and then use the linear_extrude function.

And yeah, these files are already outdated as there was one mistake (which I fixed with the bandsaw) and I’ve assembled it and found room for improvement.

You can see some earlier iterations here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Which is to say, if you want to see minor updates with very little context, follow @raster on The Instagram.

You’ll notice an issue with the balls getting stuck in the chute, so there’s a bit of work to do there. I’ve got a few ideas, just need time to test them.

And don’t worry, at some point this might all make sense, once you see the rest of the thing. Or maybe it won’t… who knows!?

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Sensor Boxes and Controller Box

Here’s a few photos of a project I recently worked on for Stamm Media and No Small Magic. These are sensor boxes that were used for a tradeshow. I don’t know how much I can say about the tech inside them, but this is what they look like.

I designed, laser cut, and assembled all the boxes. They are partially glued together but the back covers are held on with screws so as to be accessible for adjustment purposes.

This is the final product from last month’s blog post Enclosure Prototyping. Since I finished this piece first I actually added a bit of shellac to it, which makes it just a bit nicer than raw wood. (I ended up making two of these.)

The sensor boxes connect to the control box using Cat5 cable and the RJ45 Adapter Boards I developed last year. This allows for the sensors to be easily placed quite a distance from the control box by just using an existing Cat5 cable instead of needing a custom cable/connector.

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Laser Cutter Update

If you read my previous posts about my laser cutter, you may have been wondering what the latest progress is on it. Well, here’s an update!

First, some history… Brent bought this laser cutter back in 2012 (I think) then sold it to Jason in 2013. Jason kept it at Milwaukee Makerspace for about a year and a half and then took it home. He used it until he got a Glowforge in 2017 and then I got it from him. It took me at least six months before I really had it operational, but since it’s 2020 now I figured I should offer an update.

It’s been at my house and cutting things since late summer 2018, but it wasn’t really optimal. I am not 100% sure but I think it was all pretty much original parts. It would cut okay, but you had to go slow… really slow. Like, way too slow. I could do 3mm Baltic Birch, but had to go so slow for 6mm that it was basically a fire waiting to happen. The lens looked good to me, but I figured that lenses are cheap, so I started there. I got a Cloudray Lens (Diameter 18mm/Focal Length 50.8mm) and dropped it in place. (And yes, I do clean the mirrors and lens occasionally, and there is air assist running.)

I didn’t see vast improvements from the new lens, so I figured that if this was the original tube from 2012 or so, it was old, and probably needed replacement. I compared what the tube looked like when firing to a bunch of videos online and it did look weak. I got a SPT 35W CO2 Sealed Laser Tube. So in theory I dropped from 40 watts to 35 watts, but replaced an eight year old tube, so… trade off. (I also had a discount code when ordering.)

Along the way I dealt with the ammeter that was not really working. In order to see what the power knob was set to I added a 0.28″ DC Digital Voltmeter LCD wired into the potentiometer. (Hat tip to Don’s Laser Cutter Things) At least I could get an idea of how much power was being output, but I still had to deal with the ammeter that never went above 3 milliamps. I did not trust the ammeter since I was kicking out enough laser power to cut things, so I got a replacement meter, but it still showed almost no output. (More on that later!)

I had read a lot about replacing tubes and I watched a few videos. Honestly sometimes I’m amazed more people don’t electrocute themselves or burn their houses down. Doing research helps! Don’t just watch one video or read one forum post, because you might do things the wrong way. Anyway, I was able to avoid lots of PTFE tape, silicone caulk, and other things because I had a nice high voltage connector on my old tube, which I planned to liberate to use on my new tube.

I chopped it off, wired it to the high voltage line on the new tube, soldered it, and added a lot of heat shrink. (Remember to slide all that heat shrink tubing in place before you solder!)

I test fired the new tube and it burned through 3mm Baltic Birch with no problem. The only problem was that I really hoped the ammeter would work, and it didn’t. But don’t worry, we’re not done yet! One of the things I noticed when connecting the ground wire of the new tube was that there was an extra grounding wire running from the connector block to the chassis.

Look at that! So the ground line should go back to the power supply and run through the ammeter on the way so the current can be measured and displayed by the ammeter. Removing that extra grounding wire got the ammeter working as it should. I can’t say I’m surprised by this. It’s an old Full Spectrum Laser Cutter, and they did a lot of weird things in the early years.

Hey! We now have a functional ammeter, and can use the power knob to set it to run at about 15 milliamps. Neat!

I still have a few other things to do to get this cutter to perform even better, but for now this will definitely help show how much power we’re putting out.