Nova Labs will soon launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the new space. As part of the team preparing for it, I created several prototypes for laser-cut acrylic keychains to be offered as backer rewards at the lower levels. In not much time, I was able to make several variations on the Nova Labs logo, including engravings, cut out parts, different shapes, etc.
In the end, we decided to go with the more practical (and more durable due to fewer cutouts) version that includes an engraved ruler on the back.
These were cut out of 1/8″ acrylic, purchased from Delvie’s Plastics.
Check out the campaign, due to launch in early March, 2015!
Engraved Nova Labs logo keychain tag.Back of the keychain tag, showing a ruler with mm and imperial scales (1/8″).
Our office recently converted a small room for making phone calls (given our relatively open floor plan) into a space called “The Doc”. Here you could video-chat with a doctor or RN in lieu of going to your general practitioner for basic diagnoses.
We added frosted window film to the door for privacy, but the sliding barn-doors didn’t have a lock. A double-sided sign with some velcro tabs was created to indicate if the room was occupied or not, but it wasn’t terribly attractive.
The original sign created to indicate if the room was occupied or not.
I was inspired by the way a porta john or airplane lav has a visible ‘occupied’ indicator. Mine would be circular to match the look of the logo for the company’s wellness program, with a cutout for some fun text to say ‘come on in’ and ‘unless you want to see my rash, stay out’ (ok, not exactly those words).
As you can see from the file below, I tried to make a complicated detent to lock the indicator at each end of its travel. In practice, there was plenty of friction between the layers of material to not require this. Also, after about 2 months of being in use, part of it broke allowing the dial to rotate past ‘Privacy please’ a little bit. I eliminated this detail on the extra four I made for our other offices.
The crescent shape was glued between the solid back circle and engraved/cut top circle.
The center axle was a push pin stuck through the back and word/dial layer, which then had the plastic part cut off with a Dremel. I had laser cut tiny circles on each of those two layers so I knew everything would line up.
Art files used for The Doc privacy sign, and the 4 cut components. Zoom to see the over-engineered detent for locking the dial.The Doc privacy sign installed.Four signs for other offices made a few months after the prototype. The detent system was eliminated as there was enough friction to hold the sign steady.
For several months, I’ve been working on creating a controller board for driving a stepper motor along a single-axis. AKA, a motorized camera slider!
While the overall project is over 2 years in the works at this point (it started being driven by a Lego Mindstorms NXT), this is a quick preview of its current configuration.
The big plan for the Christmas Trees from early December was to let my kids decorate them. We later decided to give them to all of the grandparents for Christmas; I was able to snap a few photos before we wrapped them and hit the holiday road.
Here they are. I’ll let you guess which one the toddler decorated, vs the 4-year-old!
A week and a half ago, I created a slotted together Christmas Tree decoration as a test. My older daughter saw it and asked if she could decorate it, but I couldn’t let her as I needed it for work. Given how easy it was to create, I went ahead and made her several more to color.
These were laser cut out of not-quite 1/8″ lite plywood. The Christmas Trees are 6″ tall, and the Snowflakes are 4″ tall. The flat ones were jammed into the open spaces on the sheet of wood so I didn’t waste as much material.
The items were downloaded from Shutterstock as they had several vector graphics containing multiple Christmas Trees, so I’d only need to buy one image. Same with the snowflakes. I looked for ones with simple, symmetrical designs.
If you want to make these, here are the steps (it’s really simple):
Size the tree to whatever you want in Illustrator, Inkscape, whatever…
Measure the thickness of your material.
Make a rectangle that is half the height of your tree, and where the width is the thickness of your material (in my case, 3″ x .11″).
Center align the tree and rectangle.
Duplicate the pair of items.
On one, ‘bottom align’ the tree and rectangle. On the other, ‘top align’ the items.
Use the pathfinder options to remove the rectangle from the tree, and you’re done.
At this point I’ve created a few laser-cut tabbed boxes (trading card box, boxes for custom puzzles, and another as an electronics enclosure). None of these had an attached lid, but since this particular project was a gift for the 2-year-old daughter of a colleague, I thought that was the way to go.
I took measurements for a package of crayons that was part of her birthday present, and added in the thickness of the .11″ (really, it couldn’t be a full 1/8″?) lite plywood I had. The box maker web application by Rahul at ConnectionLab has been my go-to for these, but, I found that the pieces generated for this particular box had weird corners. I tried using another box maker found at MakerCase and it worked pretty well.
The pieces were symmetrical so it made it a little easier to work with, at the expense of the center tabs having irregular measurements compared to the others.
I took steps to smooth out the top edges of the pieces, and eliminated the tabs from the lid. Pins for the hinge were added, and I created a hole for the pin to go into. The biggest problem was that I initially made the center line of the hole above the part, so the lid didn’t sit flush with the box. I modified the file slightly dropping the hole down, and recut the 2 parts. At least those 2 pieces were pretty small so it wasn’t a huge deal.
Since most little kid birthday parties we’ve been to lately don’t include opening presents, and I haven’t been back at work yet, I don’t know how it was received. Hopefully she loved her name being engraved on the lid!
Ella and a small bird engraved on the lid of a custom laser-cut tabbed box.A custom laser-cut tabbed box for crayons.Ella and a small bird engraved on the lid of a custom laser-cut tabbed box.
Assembled prototype of a desktop Christmas Tree decoration.
It looks like this is the second post in a row with work themed projects (you just don’t see all my draft posts!) Anyway…
Last year my team gave our internal clients Christmas cards to say thank you for working with us over the year. I thought we could step it up a bit with a company-themed gift/decoration to go on their desks this December.
This is a prototype of a laser cut, slotted Christmas Tree decoration. Made of 1/8″ birch plywood, I created the design in Illustrator. The shape is intentionally simple as we are going to cut or engrave some of our graphic resources on the final pieces. My wife is advocating for red acrylic, so we’ll see what happens after we discuss at work.
Stay tuned for the final version in the next 2 weeks or so.
2 flat pieces that will slot together to make a Christmas tree decoration. This is just a prototype made of 1/8″ plywood.
Nova Labs will soon launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the new space. As part of the team preparing for it, I created several prototypes for laser-cut acrylic keychains to be offered as backer rewards at the lower levels. In not much time, I was able to make several variations on the Nova Labs logo, including engravings, cut out parts, different shapes, etc.
