Project 365 Overview

-

So the project is complete, 365 items actually made in 350 days so 2 weeks early and there were also 2 weeks off for the laser cutter fire and 4 weeks off for moving house. So it was really only 10 months of effort. It was definitely a challenge but a worthwhile one, being forced to work to a deadline made me try things differently and come up with lots of different ideas and techniques.

I have to thank my wife for being so understanding for the whole time, it's nice that the first and the last items both relate to her (she drew the ginger kitty for me years ago). Also my Son Eli, who has inspired me to make various items, as well as playing quietly in the garage while I've worked (seriously he spent 20 minutes sat in a box today)

There have definitely been some low points while I was getting used to the machine, or trying to back pedal on some missing days. I hope that the many high points have more than made up for those. There are items that we use every single day, and other items that serve no purpose but are on display around the house. The laser also provides a great way to create unique gifts for friends and it's helped out with other peoples projects and some of those are living on beyond the project.

If I had to pick one project that was my favourite, it would be tough, but the James Bond was the most awesome thing ever, but not the voiced over clip, the outtakes clip. Never has trying to do something so simple proved to be so difficult while at the same time providing endless laughs.

So what next? Many people said I would just continue on but this level of output is punishing and it led to me producing quantity of items not quality of items. One friend suggested something I much more prefer. Why don't I try to make 52 awesome items over the next year (and 12 ridiculous items beyond that). I think I'm going to go for it, I'll let you know when I'm starting.

Popular posts from this blog

Wiring the Ruida Controller

-
Image
The RDC6442G controller from Ruida This is going to be quite an image heavy post describing the rewiring needed to convert between the Leetro controller and the Ruida controller. It is also pretty straight forward on the old Just Add Sharks laser cutters because all of the wires are clearly labelled. The controller was prepared in the previous step in order to make this conversion process as smooth as possible. The Leetro (Pad03) panel on the left and the Ruida panel on the right The view from inside the laser looking up at the control panel The control panel is an easy place to start, both panels have just a single cable that runs down to the controller, both panels are a very similar size, with the Ruida panel being slightly smaller underneath so it will fit in the hole left behind easily. The Pad03 panel clips into place so you'll need to reach up inside the machine to work the clips loose. The cable runs down the inside of the laser and is cable tied onto mounti
Read more

Rainbow Puzzle Box

-
Image
This is a binary sequence puzzle box built from 3mm birch plywood, it uses a Gray code pattern to ultimately align all the dials into a rainbow pattern before the lid can be removed. It's actually a redesign of a puzzle inside Loki's box of Tricks  because I thought it would make a cool stand alone puzzle box. The files are available for sale in my Etsy store . ( svg here ) The puzzle consists of five interlocking disks that can only rotate when the disks either side of it are in the correct position to allow it. The large wheel in the middle and the disks on the underside of the lid further restrict the rotation of the disks. The large wheel must be pointed to the disk that is being rotated and the large wheel is in turn restricted from pointing to the smaller disks depending on alignment. Once all the disks are aligned into the full rainbow the large wheel is completely free to rotate and can be turned to the edge of the box and allows the lid to be removed. There is a very
Read more

Laser Cut Cryptex

-
Image
This is my laser cut cryptex. It features 28 different characters and 9 rings, giving a total possible 10.5 Trillion different combinations. I took a bit of time developing the design so that I could add some nice features. This cryptex file is laid out so that you can have any number of rings in your own design. The best feature is that the codeword is changeable, each locking ring has an outer letter ring that can be placed in any one of the 28 different positions. Once the rings are back in place the ring locking bars can added and they prevent the rings from being modified until the box is open again. It's a bit hard to explain so I made a video showing how it all work ( svg here ) It took a long time to assemble this so I lived with my initial design choices but if I were to remake it I would adjust the file to make the ring locking bars out of 6mm ply and maybe put some blind holes onto the code rings to prevent the code being brute forced.
Read more