@@johnhise4225 I very much agree! My husband wants to buy a toaster oven (a big one) for projects that will fit in it. He says that that industrial applications of this stuff are cured in big ovens. We are running out of space!

@@HaegrTheMighty thank you! That does sound like a good idea!

May I ask what this is about?

There is no hand cranking. I have a hand injury so for me, this is better. I can put my yardage on the laser (our laser is very large) so I don’t even have to cut pieces off the yardage. I’ve had a Sizzix Pro for many years which is similar to the AccuQuilt. I do a lot of appliqués too; I quilt the fabric on my longarm or straight stitch, depending on how big a piece I’m doing, then load it onto the laser. You aren’t tied to the dies and you don’t deal with cutting pads which are nice consolations. Basically any silhouette you find online can be scaled to the size you want. Once we dialed in the settings for four layers it went quickly. I also do a lot of art quilts with tiny fish scales and feathers. I can draw as many variations of a feather, some longer, some shorter, some fatter, skinnier, different shapes, apply some Heat n Bond Lite, put the drawings in the software and all that teeny tiny detailed cutting is done in a matter of minutes. I couldn’t do that art anymore if not for the laser due to my hand injury. If you’re curious you can go to onehotbobbin.com to see some of what I do. I do a lot with 3/4” strips too, and before my husband built the laser (I haven’t looked recently) there wasn’t a die for that size strip. Basically, any elimination of hand work saves more of my hand strength for chores and sewing. That was the main impetus on my part for the laser. It also makes cutting out apparel patterns a breeze. I hate cutting out fabric from patterns. All those pdfs for apparel can be downloaded into the software that runs the laser (LightBurn).

I forgot to mention I have a little KZbin channel for sewing at danameek5843. We do so much laser content on the laser channel that I haven’t done the best job of keeping the sewing channel current, but I have some of my work there too. Lots of still photos on onehotbobbin.com. When I get going my metal bobbins get pretty warm 😂

For a day or so, but it dissipates. The quilted appliqués hold on to the charred smell a bit longer; I presume the batting is the culprit. I will say that I used some poly blend batting for appliqués for greeting cards and I immediately went back to 100% cotton. The poly melts and really retains the odor.

Thank you! I did some sleighs in it and we were glad to see that the silver version of this foiled paper also cuts just as well 😃.

1/8” maple or birch, I can’t recall which one for sure.

@@CutItOutWithUs thanks... Did you use borax to make it dark?

@@FredSchmitthammer you’re welcome! And no, we haven’t tried borax yet. I can ask my husband what power settings he used for the etching of the minor roads if that would be helpful to you?

@@CutItOutWithUs thank you and yes. I have struggled with the minor roads not being black like your are. Tell him thank you in advance!

@@FredSchmitthammer You’re welcome! 300mm/sec on the speed 70% power, 0.15 mm line interval (169 lines per inch). We have a 100 watt CO2 laser. He also doesn’t recall whether it was maple or birch but for sure it was not stained. I hope this helps 😊.

Thanks! It’s fun!

We have used painter’s tape on previous projects but find that scorching creeps under the seams in the tape. We get a more even result with the single sheet of masking. By blow gun, do you mean a heat gun?

@@CutItOutWithUs NP wasn't sure. But an air-compressor with a air gun. Im guessing if you use a heat gun it will leave a sticky residue on your items, which would kinda suck.

Thank you! I’ll look for them!

Thank you for the tip! We will try it!

I didn’t because of the melt factor. The edges get a touch crispy if you don’t have the power and speed settings just right. Every laser is different so you have to play with it a little to find the right combination for your laser. Have fun!

It’s called a mountable dust coupler. It comes in 3 different sizes. We ordered it from Rockler, item #59056.

This is a 100 watt CO2 laser called the Rezo laser. My husband bought the plans online and built it himself, customizing some of the features like the drop down bed, building it in two halves that can be separated, and a few other things. If you’re interested in a closer look at the build I documented the whole thing on our blog at rezolaserbuild.Wordpress.com.

Hi Chalkline1505, thank you so much for your input. My husband has talked about getting a toaster oven for this purpose but ever since we started using epoxy we haven’t gone back to the powder paint. The infrared sounds like a really solid solution though because that powder is so fine and the blowing IS a problem with the heat gun. This is great information; I’m going to share it with Cameron. We have a lot of powder paint so I’d like to make use of it. This sounds a lot smarter and safer than what we have done with the heat gun. I’ve seen people use their laser to do it but it didn’t work well for us at all. Thank you again for sharing your knowledge and experience!

It does; it works better than using the laser for sure but still doesn’t render an optimal finish. We have come to prefer epoxy; this video is one of the earliest in our laser adventures. There is always something new to learn.

Thank you! We are really happy with how it turned out. It’s so nice to have them off the counter too!

I will absolutely post photos! The whole basement is such a mess right now-puzzles in various stages of the process-I’m very anxious to get this done!😃

Thank you! It’s soooo much better than getting “fleece lung” while cutting a lot of fleece, not to mention the mess and wear on your rotary cutter. No toxic fumes. PVC is your main concern when it comes to toxic fumes. For example, I wanted to cut some glittery adhesive backed “film” that had a paper backing. My husband was concerned about it so I contacted the company. It turned out that the sequins were made of PVC. One of the issues I’m running into is that confirming for CERTAIN that a medium is laser safe is difficult in some cases. With the proliferation of lasers you’d think that places that sell consumer lasers like GlowForge sold at Michael’s would pressure companies to test and label their products as safe or not safe. Also, the fleece does have a smell to it when you cut it, but everything emits a smell when you burn it. Odor doesn’t necessarily mean toxicity. Thanks for watching; I’m always happy to answer what ever questions I can. 😃

@@CutItOutWithUs Thanks for the reply, you're the first person in an hour of internet searching who has said anything on fumes. Have you tried engraving it? I've seen various places say they can do it, so I'll definitely try that at some point. Currently I've just be lasering my patterns, but if I can get my seam allowances dialed in, this'd be a huge time save.

@@jacoblewis8664 Hi Jacob, I haven’t tried engraving fleece, in fact, I never even thought of it! We did try engraving denim, however, and we didn’t get it right in that the denim fibers just gave way under very little tension. To be honest, we got distracted with other projects and haven’t returned to it. If you peruse our channel you’ll see we are all over the place. You mentioned patterns. My husband is the Lightburn whiz but what I did was trace my pattern pieces on Swedish tracing paper and then he took a photo and essentially traced and scaled it from the photo. I don’t know if that helps or not. Have you heard of Ditto? If not, google it. You can buy a “membership” (they tier it so the last I looked you can buy like, 12 patterns or basically, various increments of patterns) without buying their projector and download your scaled to your size with seam allowances included PDF to lightburn and cut from there. The only reason I know this is because I pestered the living daylights out of their customer service person. It’s a long story but basically, they don’t understand their product. They kept telling me that the file format was “digital” so I couldn’t use it without their hardware setup. But no. After pushing and pressing, explaining that every file has a three letter extension after its name which is the format, she finally relented and sent the question up the flagpole to find out that it’s the oh so esoteric PDF 😆. I kept explaining that as lasers become more ubiquitous (they’re in all of the fashion design schools) that downloading patterns straight to lasers would become another revenue stream for them. The catch is that the site hosts the Big 4 pattern makers and some indie patterns but ONLY DITTO patterns are scalable. 17 measurement/data points are input and the algo scales it to your body. It’s very cool and I don’t know why the Big 4 aren’t all over this. They’d sell so many more patterns and the textile manufacturers would be positively impacted as well. But what do I know right? I just hope other people pester them too so they open the door to other pattern makers and ultimately, making more money for themselves. Hubby says it’s a lot of work to digitize a pattern but, they need to keep pace as the industry has been on life support for years with their tissue paper. Just my opinion.

@@CutItOutWithUs @CutItOut-xx7qv I'll get back to you on the engraving fleece, I've got some cool ideas for it. The pattern/project I'm doing is a dragon cloak, but I could engrave scales onto the fleece to give it more texture. Apparently it sort of insets a slightly darker area? Hard to describe, but there's loads of pictures online. The pattern itself is quite large and is distributed as a pdf, split up onto many a4 pages, so thankfully this is a simple job with inkscape (and some librecad because my laser is funky and only likes certain files). These dynamically adjusting patterns you mentioned are quite cool. I'd hazard a guess that these are based off these fabric CAD packages. These are able to do so much, even to simulating fabric with near life accuracy! Unfortunately for me said programs cost an arm and a leg and I couldn't even justify it considering a pen and paper works fine! I'm honestly surprised more patterns don't come in large laser cuttable formats, because also large format cutting and printing machines exist and are fairly common (thinking about even building a small cutter myself), so it's not like it's a niche. Even if I'm still manually cutting the fabric out, it's a huge time save over gluing together 20 a4 pages, plus I can now use more durable materials for my patterns, such as posterboard or greyboard.

I haven’t had time to look into the fleece engraving yet but last night, your description of it made me wonder if the engraving is the melt point. Any time we cut polyester the cut lines are fused and feel like melted plastic. I’ll definitely have a look around because you’ve piqued my curiosity! I should have mentioned that Ditto is a free app. Say you buy a Ditto pattern for $8. The app is free and you’d enter your 17 measurement points and the app would do its thing to output the pattern that is graded to your dimensions. So basically you get all the whiz bang for the price of the patterns you buy, then load the PDF’s into your laser software. The thing that can be limiting is the size of your laser. You need a substantial cutting field for clothing; when we were shopping lasers we realized that the size we needed was considered industrial and didn’t find one that could fit through a standard residential door. My husband is an aerospace engineer with an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering so after exploring various laser blueprints he chose to build the Rezo laser. He modified the plans so it could be taken apart in two pieces, separating the top from the bottom, so if we ever relocated it could be moved. If you’re ever interested in the process of a build like that there is a link to our blog where the journey from the first part shipments to completion is documented along with all of our ensuing projects.

Thanks! Me too!!!

Thank you! We love your epoxy so thank you for making it!

We do! Early in the pandemic (waaay before we had a laser 🤣) we started puzzling. I read that it was a good way to improve spatial reasoning which would help me with apparel construction and pattern reading so I was super interested, and Cameron enjoys it too as long as it’s challenging. We ended up having some of the most interesting conversations while putting them together; I highly recommend it!

Most things are more time consuming than they appear to be is the lesson I’ve learned as we’ve taken on different projects. Lots of inactive drying time too. It will be nice to get everything on the wall.

Aww thank you! I love making them and am honored that you’d choose to keep them ♥️

🤣🤣🤣 I bet I could find someone who would say he didn’t need a boss🤣🤣🤣

Thank you. I wish so much that she was still here because I’d make her one. I think out of everyone in my family she loved Buhl Park the most. In reading about its history, it was such an enormous gift and feels like something that wouldn’t happen in today’s world.

Thank you for this! We will definitely take your advice and we greatly appreciate it! It’s such an investment to make an end grain board; we feel like the beneficiaries of the collective wisdom and experience here! May I ask if you’re using the straight knives or the helical blade?

Thank you! I don’t know how to upload still photos to KZbin but the final photos are on our blog 😃. We are just getting our feet wet. Any suggestions on colorants for your epoxies? We aren’t happy with the pigments we have.

Thank you for this! My husband says he doesn’t have one but will look into it!

I’ll post stills on the blog.

It’s all a hot mess at the moment but we put the cart before the horse on the CNC. We have a lot to learn. He just planed the cutting board and there are numerous lessons learned 😐

LOL! I never imagined that this video would provoke so much interest and response! We are sorry to have unsettled you😆. We did use clamps for the glue up and also raised the grain. I think our mistakes were in the operation of the machine. As you and others have noted, we took too big of a bite! Our next board will be an end grain board so we are grateful for everybody’s generous input! Hopefully next time will be better!

What makes this video even better is the support, love, and interest of you're wife!

@@Alex-oz6sf hi Alex😀. It may humor you to know that I nearly begged him to buy the planer and was the instigator for the laser. Once in a while he will talk about getting rid of a tool and I’m all, “nooooooo! We might need it!” The Rockler catalogs come in my name 🤣. I want a drum sander!

We soooo appreciate this input! I read all about the helical head; you’re right about buy once, cry once 🤣. We bought this set up as a Black Friday package knowing we wanted to get our feet wet but that ultimately, the helical is where it’s at. I shared Keith’s feedback with hubby and he was appreciative of it; he has done a good deal of wood working in his life but mostly structural stuff. He has never used a planer before but I have big plans for his woodworking hobby 🤣. We will definitely put this great advice into practice! Thank you for taking the time to help us-you and Keith both! Where would we all be without the makers on KZbin?!?

That’s an interesting idea Bruce 😃. I’ll share that with hubby. We cut the juice groove into in on both sides on the CNC and I think at least one of them got gobbled up by it.

Thank you Keith!!! We so appreciate your help! Total newbs here!

I mean, almost anything would have been an improvement 😅. It’s nice to have it complete. Cameron loves crossing things off the list!

I absolutely will!

Thank you!

What are KHAL viewers? This channel is for our CO2 laser endeavors; showing the croissant making process is really just a one off thing for us. My husband is a really technical guy, lots of math and such, so we thought the folks who follow our blog would get a kick out of watching him do something waaay outside the norm for him. He barely makes toast but really studied up on croissants. All of this is to say that we will be returning to our laser art for the channel, not cooking or baking. Thank you for your interest though; check out our blog if you like. We made cookie presses with the laser and feature them as well as the cookies here on KZbin as well as on the blog. Enjoy!

you are most welocme

The only thing that will stand in the way is time. It’s soooo time consuming!