Board Game Inserts

The Perry household plays a lot of board games. Frequently, the game boxes are designed for shipping more than for component storage. This isn't always the case, but when it happens we often want a better storage solution than shoving a bunch of baggies in the box.

In the past, I've solved this by hand-cutting foam core with a ruler and blade. It's a time-consuming, manual process, but the results look great. I use sewing pins to hold pieces together while the school glue dries.



More recently, I took to figuring out how to cut foam core on the CNC machine. Ideally, this would be done with a utility blade drag knife, but $250 is well outside the price range of a hobby project. Instead, I took to ordering and testing several types of bits for cutting foam. This resulted in many disasters and broken bits. Finally, I stumbled upon a two-flute straight 1.5mm bit, which works perfectly.

Designing inserts with a CAD tool isn't necessarily faster than cutting by hand, but it's much more reproducible. Furthermore, it's easy to recycle some design elements from one insert to the next.


Assembling pieces this way is actually really fast and fun. The slots make it easy to determine which pieces connect where without any measuring. I sent a duplicate design to my mother who had one of the same games I did. She had no problems putting it together. Here's a full list of inserts I've designed that I'll update as I design more.


Lastly, a friend was kind enough to let me use his laser cutter to make acrylic pieces for a card game. These acrylic counters are much nicer than the stuff included with the game. They look fantastic. I don't have enough material for a full blog post on these, so I thought I'd include them here.

Kitchen Remodel

To start with, here are the before view, the mock-up view we planned on, and the completed view.


We decided to tackle the project on our own, purchasing and installing our own cabinets, backsplash, faucets, plumbing, etc. We did have the granite counters professionally installed. They're heavy and breakable.

Our first big surprise came when we pulled out he existing island and found the hardwood floor didn't extend underneath. We had hoped to move it away from the oven a bit (it was installed too close), but we ended up constrained in where it would fit. You can see the original linoleum where the island used to be, which we covered with plywood to match the height of the hardwood.



Cabinet installation started slowly, but we got faster as we went.


The countertop installers lifted and placed everything by hand. I was super impressed that they made the long L shape out of one solid piece with no seams.


After cabinets and counter, we started on the backsplash. Many home remodelers refer to this stage as ABB: All But Backsplash. Couples often take months or even years to make a decision and finish the backsplash. With the kitchen usable, there's nothing forcing you to get the project done.



The last steps were the fastest: toekick, handles, and molding. I made a jig to help with handle installation. Just line it up and drill.


We're really happy with how everything turned out. Start to finish, it took us three months, but that includes a solid month when we paused all renovation for a family event. It looks great!


I put together a 15-second slideshow showcasing the before and after comparisons. We love seeing the transformation.

Custom T-Shirts

After the success of the DIY diamond drag bit, I wondered if I couldn't use the same mount to create a vinyl cutter. Cut vinyl is used to create permanent "stickers" that you see on cars, signs, advertisements, walls, and t-shirts.

A desktop vinyl cutter costs around $400. It's certainly cheaper than a CNC machine, but if you already have a CNC machine, why not innovate? A vinyl cutting blade only costs a dollar or two.


I started small, testing the concept on a sample piece of vinyl with scrap fabric. It turned out okay! The cut was good, showing small details, but my ironing application needs practice.


Time for something bigger! I created a larger t-shirt design. You can't really see a difference when the vinyl is first cut -- it still looks like a solid piece of vinyl until the excess pieces are "weeded" out.


After weeding, the vinyl is placed face-down on the fabric, flipping the image. (It's important to print all text backwards for this reason.) This is iron-on vinyl made for fabric, but vinyl also comes in self-stick.
 

A few seconds under the iron, then the backing peels off and the shirt is done!


The process was fun and rather simple. You can even do multiple colors by layering them. It's very inexpensive -- a sheet of vinyl costs under a dollar and I bought this blank t-shirt at a thrift store. So for a couple dollars, you could make one-off shirts for special occasions. Lots of good possibilities that I'm excited to try out.

Edit: For those interested in doing this themselves, this seems like an inexpensive, easy way to mount the blade if you want a less DIY appoach.

Odds and Ends of 2017

This is a small gallery of 2017 projects that, while fun, didn't merit their own blog posts. The first is a pinewood derby car. My son did his own car this year (I only helped with his wheels), but I thought it would be fun to make my own.





I also helped a kid from church whose father wasn't around. He wanted a particular style of car, so we did a 3d cut on the CNC and he painted it up.


Occasionally, I'll do a decoration piece like this sign. It was made from some scrap wood given me by a family that moved out a couple years back. Turned out very nicely.


Lastly, I did another piece of halftone art. I already have a post for this style, so no point in making another. I thought it would be fun to make a black and white zebra motif, framed in black. It's fun how you can't see the image in the first picture until after you've seen the result.



I gave away all of these projects as gifts. They were fun to make and turned out nicely. Maybe in the future I'll do a post of projects that didn't turn out well. A "mistakes edition" or something.

Ravioli Rolling Pin

For Christmas, I made my wife a ravioli rolling pin. Amazon sells a few different types of these, but most don't work well because the space between individual ravioli is too narrow and doesn't adhere well. I spotted a Kickstarter project for a deluxe version some time ago that looked much better. The project description even included dimensions, making it easier to adapt the design for my 4th axis.

I started by gluing a couple pieces of maple together and roughly rounding them out so they'd fit on my CNC.


I used the CNC to cut it perfectly round, then added measured grooves with a large, round bit.



A flat-bottomed bit was used to create divets on four sides, then I hand-cut some strips to fit in. Each strip is 3/4" wide, which provides plenty of separation for the ravioli. I had originally planned to use a dark walnut here for contrast, but ended up going with cherry because I already had scrap pieces on hand.


A final pass on the CNC was used to level the strips and round everything out again.



After applying some food-safe seasoning oil, the wood really pops. It looks great.


Our first round of paste was a little messy (too much filling!), but turned out well. Lots of fun and easy to use!

Spooky Halloween Eyes

[Updated November 2017 with a Halloween video]

Halloween is a fun excuse for making cool costumes and projects. I thought I'd try a Halloween decoration--something we could put in the yard on Halloween and use as decorations in our church's Trunk or Treat event.

The idea was to hide pairs of glowing eyes throughout the yard that would slowly light up, blink a few times, then fade back to darkness. With several of these hidden around, you can't tell where each one is hidden and the yard looks haunted. The original idea came from an article that wired a few of these together, but for my version I eliminated the wires and made each pair of eyes completely independent of the rest.


My first task was creating a simple circuit board. You could do this yourself with wires and a stick, but I was curious how well the CNC could do at making circuit boards. It did quite well! The results are easier than wires and cheaper to produce than anything you could buy.


Following that, I wrote a microcontroller program to control the eyes. The microcontroller makes this project utterly simple, requiring only one component to control all the blinking and allowing the various parameters to be randomized: how fast the eyes fade on/off, how many times they "blink", how long they stay dark, etc. This microcontroller, a PIC10F200, is roughly the size of a grain of rice. Larger versions are available, but I wanted to see if the CNC could machine boards with such fine details.


After programming the microcontroller, I added a battery holder and a pair of LEDs to each board. Just put in a battery to turn it on. I haven't tested, but a rough calculation leads me to think these will last 6 or 7 hours on a single battery, enough to leave them on all night. (Update: These were still running fine after 12 hours of overnight use.)


(November 2017 update) Here's a short video of them on the night of Halloween.

Halftone Art

I've been playing around with making some halftone art using various techniques. My first attempt involved cutting a lined picture, painting the entire thing black, then sanding just the top to get the white (or wood color) for contrast. It didn't work at all. The pine wood was too soft and the ridges soaked in the paint. The lines were too close together because the workpiece was too small.

My next few attempts involved painting the wood with thicker paint before cutting, then milling the portions I wanted to be light. I used GIMP for my first attempt. If you want to try this yourself, just follow these steps: 1) Convert to grayscale: Image -> Mode -> Grayscale, 2) Apply a halftone filter: Filters -> Distort -> Newsprint (optional: change spots to lines).



I tried two other attempts using some free software called Halftoner. It's very easy to use and I recommend it over GIMP for this. I did both lines and dots. Dots look really cool up close.


Here's all three pieces side by side, starting with the most recent. At a distance, the Halftoner wavy lines look the best, but they looks awful up close. I wasn't terribly happy with any of the results. They were too small to allow the detail to show and, regardless, the pictures came out looking too dark.


Showing additional detail is simply a matter of increasing the workpiece size, but giving the pictures a lighter, happier look requires working on a white canvas rather than a black one. I ended up using whiteboard material. Specifically, I replaced the kitchen whiteboard, which was showing its age for dry erase markers, and used the old whiteboard panel to make a picture.


After milling, I painted the board with diluted black acrylic paint, the same stuff I used to paint the earlier boards. The paint easily wipes off of the white melamine, leaving a fun piece of art. With this success, I'll continue to use the technique on future halftone projects.