What would you say: A complete nativity scene, stable, crib and family, engraved and cut in less then 5 minutes on the M1. Possible? Yes or No?
This is about how to built a miniature nativity scene (33mm = 1 1/4" wide) from a single wodden dog tag. And yes: It is lasered in less then 5 minutes.
So if you forgot, that your friends come for christmas, take a wodden dog tag from the material package, laser the nativity scene glue it, grab a bag of homemade cookies and decorate this bag with this nativity scene and you are set. Or if your kids have got a dollhouse: Give them some christmas decoration - they will love it.
Buit here is the story why I did this:
We have a christmas gnome, who lives under our stairs. Every year before christmas he decorates his door and writes a letter to our children. And they are happy. They cannot wait for the day his decoration appears. This time we enhanced the decoration. Besides the christmas tree he now has a nativity scene. I questioned myself if it is possible to build one from a single wodden dog tag. I really love this material and hop that those will be availble in the xTool store, soon. So I searched Etsy and Google but finally decided to start from the scratch.
For mee this example shows how small designs can be and how precise the M1 is. Can you make a even smaller nativity scene and even faster then this one? let me know!
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Step 1
I usually use Adobe Illustrator for my designs. But this design only uses basic techniques - for the figures mainly ellipses that are joined or substracted from each other. This can even be done in XCS or in vector graphics software. I tested PowerPoint and even this works. I started with the drawing of the family, then generated the outline for cutting, just 0.5mm wider then my drawing. Then I added the links to this outline and finally constructed the stable with matching holes. Here it is good, if your software supports editing position and sizes in numbers as it is difficult to be precise enough with the mouse. XCS does. So it is just a little math and you have the links and matching holes.
For those of you who have not used the geometrical editing with joining and substracting, the picture in ths step illustrates this a little bit. This picture shows how Maria's jacket was created. I started with an ellipse (1). This blue Ellipse will be the main part of the jacket. First I had to remove the part where the jacket is opened. For this I painted a second ellipse (2). Then I selected the blue ellipse again and afterwards the orange one. Now they have to be substracted from each other. Result is shown in 3. Now I had to create the lower border of the jacket, which should also be slightly curved. So I have drawn a fairly large ellipse (4, green), which marks the border. I want to keep the intersection part of green and blue, but also the part of blue which is above the green. So I have added a green rectangle (5) and combined both green figure (6). The resulting figure covers everything I want to keep from my blue geometry. So I have selected the blue and the green geometry and have choosen to build the intersection. In XCS this is called "Unite at overlap". Number 7 shows the result - the left part of the jacket. The right part is the a mirrored copy of this.
All the other parts were done similar.
Step 2
Setting 1
Process Method
Laser Cut
Process Material
3mm Basswood Plywood
Power(%) or Cut Pressure(g)
85
Speed(mm/s)
10
Pass
1
Setting 2
Process Method
Bitmap Laser Engrave
Process Material
3mm Basswood Plywood
Power(%) or Cut Pressure(g)
85
Speed(mm/s)
125
Lines per cm
200
Pass
1
Bitmap mode
Grayscale
Lasering this design is a little tricky. I usually use 85% and 125mm/s for engraving the dog tags and 85% 10mm/s for cutting them. And I use the air assist for better quality. Problem is that the parts of this design are so small that they are blown away by the air assist and the smallest part (the star) will fell in the honeycomb and is difficult to get out without damaging ist. But without honeycomb or air assist you will see fumes on the wood and as these parts are so small they might be completely covered with those marks. So I decided to use an old piece of plywood and some double-sided tape to attach the dog tag. This works perfectly. The tape served as a mask on the backside so I had no fumes there and it kept the parts in place, so I was able to use the air assist and have a good quality on the front. I also experimented with masking tape on both sides and without the air assist, but this way the result was best.
Step 3
Glue everything together. The image illustrates where the parts go.
I usually use Adobe Illustrator for my designs. But this design only uses basic techniques - for the figures mainly ellipses that are joined or substracted from each other. This can even be done in XCS or in vector graphics software. I tested PowerPoint and even this works. I started with the drawing of the family, then generated the outline for cutting, just 0.5mm wider then my drawing. Then I added the links to this outline and finally constructed the stable with matching holes. Here it is good, if your software supports editing position and sizes in numbers as it is difficult to be precise enough with the mouse. XCS does. So it is just a little math and you have the links and matching holes.
For those of you who have not used the geometrical editing with joining and substracting, the picture in ths step illustrates this a little bit. This picture shows how Maria's jacket was created. I started with an ellipse (1). This blue Ellipse will be the main part of the jacket. First I had to remove the part where the jacket is opened. For this I painted a second ellipse (2). Then I selected the blue ellipse again and afterwards the orange one. Now they have to be substracted from each other. Result is shown in 3. Now I had to create the lower border of the jacket, which should also be slightly curved. So I have drawn a fairly large ellipse (4, green), which marks the border. I want to keep the intersection part of green and blue, but also the part of blue which is above the green. So I have added a green rectangle (5) and combined both green figure (6). The resulting figure covers everything I want to keep from my blue geometry. So I have selected the blue and the green geometry and have choosen to build the intersection. In XCS this is called "Unite at overlap". Number 7 shows the result - the left part of the jacket. The right part is the a mirrored copy of this.
All the other parts were done similar.
Lasering this design is a little tricky. I usually use 85% and 125mm/s for engraving the dog tags and 85% 10mm/s for cutting them. And I use the air assist for better quality. Problem is that the parts of this design are so small that they are blown away by the air assist and the smallest part (the star) will fell in the honeycomb and is difficult to get out without damaging ist. But without honeycomb or air assist you will see fumes on the wood and as these parts are so small they might be completely covered with those marks. So I decided to use an old piece of plywood and some double-sided tape to attach the dog tag. This works perfectly. The tape served as a mask on the backside so I had no fumes there and it kept the parts in place, so I was able to use the air assist and have a good quality on the front. I also experimented with masking tape on both sides and without the air assist, but this way the result was best.
Glue everything together. The image illustrates where the parts go.