Laser Cut a Premium Checker Board

A laser cut project doesn't have to look cheap. You can make a premium checker/chess board using basic laser-grade plywood and a bit of glue, and you can do it for less than $30.
In this video, I will show how to create this project and highlight tips along the way. I will use a diode laser but you can use almost any laser for this as long as it is accurate...and I'll show you how to achieve this accuracy even when your laser manufacturer tries very hard to make it impossible.
In the end, you will get a great checkerboard that looks like a high-end board and the checkers to go with it.
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►►►► VIDEO CONTENTS
0:00 Introduction
2:33 Laser Calibration
8:48 Board Design and Cutting
10:34 Board Assembly
16:14 Making the Checkers
18:32 The Finished Project
18:55 Final tips and thoughts
FTC Legal Disclaimer - Some links found in the description box of my videos may be affiliate links, meaning I will make a commission on sales you make through my link. This is at no extra cost to you to use my links/codes, it's just one more way to support me and my channel.
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#stevemakeseverything #xtool #checkers #woodworking #chessboard #diodelaser #diy #diycrafts #laserengraver #laserengraving #laserengravingmachine #laserbusiness #lasercutting

[@crestonsimpson1370]

A decent amount of engravers are moving to using double sided adhesive for doing projects like these instead of glue. You can put this on before you cut everything out and it will cut out perfectly. Then you just peel and stick. Its industrial strength and so far I havent heard of any problems with it. It also saves about a 1/4 of the complete project time.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Yes, you can use 3M tape on the back first and then cut it, and it will be fine. If I was making this out of Acrylic I would do just that, but for things that are obviously deserving of wood glue, I'll stick to the standard. Tape might be faster but it will cost a lot more, plus wood glue will hold forever.

[@mrgrinch61]

super nice board great job

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@derekjenkinson8014]

For calibrating I find it best to do a square cut as large as you can comfortably measure with a micrometer.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

For better accuracy you might want to cut a few different sizes from small to large. From this you can calculate the average error and make adjustments. For CO2 lasers you will also want to cut squares at different parts of the workspace to test for angular misalignment in the beam

[@td0gg1]

What a wonderful project! Thank you for sharing this.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

I really like projects where there isn't really a design to follow. If you are using lightburn you can make all of this without any other design tool.

[@ibcwhite]

Great video and awesome project...I will definitely try this! Thanks!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Nice! 😀

[@TheLouisianaHobbyGuy]

*Excellent video as always Steve!* I have a checkerboard on my list as well, but just slightly different build. Great tips!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Awesome. It should be a rite of passage to make one of these.😀. I'll await yours to see what i can learn as well. Maybe we'll have to do a collaboration at some point.

[@crushvapor1147]

Thank you Steve great video. I was fairly set on getting a D1 Pro but after watching this I'm not sure. Part of what I thought I want to do with the laser is to cut out things accurately as measuring aid or patterns... for woodworking or other maker projects.

[@crushvapor1147]

I'm assuming the other brands can be calibrated?

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@crushvapor1147 Yes

[@SteveMakesEverything]

I wouldn't get too down on this specific limitation of the D1 Firmware. For cutting, this is still one of the best lasers. My message here was more to hopefully inspire Xtool to fix this. They do offer more control of these parameters in their own software (moreso in Laserbox Basic for the D1), but at some point they will need to realize that any business or advanced user of their laser is going to be running on Lightburn.

[@atienne_navarre]

@@SteveMakesEverything I have four lasers now and the X-tool series has been in the corner of my eye, but little things like this limitation would bug me. Similar reason as to why we have three craft cutters and none of them are Cricut, because they pulled something similar a few years back. Im sure they have their reasons but sometimes those reasons get in the way. Great Video by the way. We've been looking to add a chessboard to our lineup.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@atienne_navarre Well definitely if you want to do something like a chessboard you will want to calibrate your laser pretty well. As I showed in this video you can beat a D1 Pro into submission, but it's not ideal for this application. In your situation, I would look at the Atezr P20 or V35. It doesn't have this limitation and, particularly the V35 has ample power to chop through plywood to produce a great-looking board quickly.

[@adamgeiger4990]

Im was just about to buy the xtools pro 20 but now you have given me something to consider, thank you.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Make no mistake, the D1pro is an awesome laser. Xtool made a design choice that is an inconvenience if you need accurately dimensioned parts. You can work around it and still benefit from the solid mechanical design of this laser and the D1 pro would still be one of my top choices if I was buying a new laser

[@lemonadesmart]

Watching the finished product remind me of a game played in AVATAR (LAST AIRBENDER), Do you know why? It's because of your logo. The game is called Pi-show, it's just lik checkers

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Nice! I’m sure James Cameron subscribes to my channel and now he’s going to want to try to sue me 🥲

[@3dtwerking324]

I think I seen this method before and I'm not really sure why people expect it to work! You cannot compensate for kerf using the machine movement calibrations or every time you change the size of your project you will be out again. This is not an XTool problem, well the inability to adjust calibrations is but that is not the problem here. The problem is the diameter of the cutter not the cutter movement. If you adjust the movement to compensate for the cutter then you will find if you change the project size from 50mm to 300mm you will be out by 2-10mm. This method calibrates the machine to working with that exact cutter at that exact size only! This problem is all lasers and CNC machines and not XTools, its technically a software issue. The 2nd problem nobody talks about is actually not a problem it is knowledge of how it works, lightburn is centered toolpaths. The laser will follow right down the middle of what you draw thus creating problems when mostly cutting. People using lightburn assume there is no kerf and its a perfect cut less than 1 micron thick when they actually need to cut "outside" the box since the box is draw at final dimensions not cut dimensions. That added to many lasers have a different X and Y kerf. Its like drawing a 50mm box on wood then cutting down the center with a circular saw, the kerf of the blade will make a 48mm x 48mm final size. Oppsie. A woodworker will cut to the outside and automatically compensate. It is difficult to see with small numbers so lets use bigger numbers so you can see what happens when you compensate for kerf with machine calibration. Lets say you have a router with a 50mm diameter cutter (maybe your laser is 50mm dia) same as a laser really just more material removed for the example. If you calibrate the mechanical movement of the toolhead to compensate for the tool you will have to adjust the machine to actually move 100mm when its commanded to move 50mm to compensate. Now you cut a perfect 50mm square for your chess board, but wait. Now cut a 400mm box, what is going to happen? For every 50mm of movement the machine is now calibrated to move 100mm so your 400mm box will have a tool path of 800mm. I don't think your part is going to fit! Why because you compensated your machine to move an extra +/- 50mm for every 50mm of movement. Ignore the tool, if you tell your cnc machine to move 50mm it must move 50mm period otherwise you have no idea what is moving where and how far. This is completely independent of the tool. Projects in lightburn are often best to be created in cut size (laser toolpath cut outside the final size) not final size. Lightburn doesn't magically guess your kerf or pick and choose what lines to cut "outside" or "centered" The video example at the start and a few on youtube explain exactly as the example as a calibration method. It won't work! You will pull your hair out.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

The whole point of doing calibration on a laser is to ensure accuracy. Kerf in this case plays no part since the goal is to get accuracy on the cut part rather than the cut itself. To this end, it is relatively easy to get better than 0.1mm accuracy with just about any diode laser and for this project that is plenty of accuracy. My hair is intact and all of the squares are accurate, and not once did I have to consider kerf since my goal was to make accurate cut squares. I’m making no assumptions of future accuracy for other dimensional cuts.

[@3dtwerking324]

@@SteveMakesEverything But you calibrated based on the cut part, this cut part is a factor of toolpath and kerf. Then calibrated based on this measurement. Try a test, after using machine calibration for a 50mm square cut then cut 200mm and measure again, see how accurate it still is. I bet its out by 3 times the kerf! Then do it again on material 3 times thicker where the kerf size doubles or triples.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

​@@3dtwerking324 I think you're missing the point. Everyone knows that the error will vary with size. The point here is I specifically wanted squares that were exactly 50x50mms and that's all I cared about in this example. So for the part, I care about there is no error, and as noted kerf doesn't even come into play here. If I wanted different-sized square I would recalibrate for that. It only takes a couple of minutes to do a calibration and there aren't that many items you'd cut where it would matter that much anyway if the error was 0 or 1mm across the part.

[@rccanuck4473]

How long does the laser last I bought (I know) a cheap amazon add on for the 3018 Cnc. To check it out. It lasted about a year it can only cut paper now. Very weak output now

[@SteveMakesEverything]

If you are cutting with a 100% power the module will have a shorter life, though a year seems a bit short. Figure at least a couple years of regular use as a good benchmark

[@steenstavnshoj1967]

I'm wondering if couldn't fix the dimensional deviation by changing th kerf?

[@SteveMakesEverything]

You could try it and probably get close if the error in the X and Y directions was similar. Kerf adjustment would be equal in both directions

[@steenstavnshoj1967]

@@SteveMakesEverything well i wasn't aware of that limitation. A topic to suggestt to Lightburn Especiaaly with rectangular spot on some lases...

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@steenstavnshoj1967 Hmm, that's something I didn't consider on kerf. If the beam is rectangular the would be marginally different in each direction. Most rectangular beams are 0.06mmx0.08mm so it's not dramatic, but if you are trying to get hyper-accuracy 1t would matter. The method I use here for the D1 would account for that, but the basic kerf compensation in Lightburn wouldn't

[@axeldejesus2060]

Hello Steve, Thanks for this video. After I watched it I tested my Ortur Laser Master 3 and found out I have the same issue. I cut a 50mm square and when I measured it, it was 49.8 mm on both the x and y. Should I run the settings calibration you showed and if so; does Ortur allows me to write it? Thanks again, Steve.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

With an OLM 3 you shouldn't need to jump through any hoops and at least your laser is still producing squares. In Lightburn, you can choose the Edit->Machine Settings menu options and from there you can calibrate the X and Y axes. It should be easy since you already have the exact measurement that you can enter into the calibration tool.

[@axeldejesus2060]

Thanks Steve. Is this a one time thing?

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@axeldejesus2060 The laser will stay fairly accurate, but you should assume that before you cut 50 copies of something you create one and make sure it's the size you want. Calibrate as needed. You could also cut squares of several different sizes from very large to very small and calibrate that way. It's won't change once you set it, but the scale may not be linear across the entire size range of your laser.

[@axeldejesus2060]

Thank you so much Steve. I really appreciate it.

[@kapa1611]

👍👍👍

[@SteveMakesEverything]

Hope it was useful

[@home-lab]

Thanks for sharing. I do not know how lightburn exactly is working. But if I’m right you “told” light burn the specifics of the D1 by supplying a file. The first thing I would check if I can find this file on the harddisk this, or the file where lightburn is storing the parameters for this cutter, and check if this file is read only. Because I dot have a D1, lightburn or a Windows computer I do not know which file. I do not expect, but can be wrong, that the correction is written to te cutter. I expect they are stored on the PC. If you want to find out of the correction of is stored locally (on the PC) or on the cutter you can find out via een second PC and an other (laser)cutter with lightburn. If you do the corrections on the first PC and have solved it also for the second PC the corrections are stored on the cutter. If you have to add the corrections to the second PC you know the corrections are not stored on the laser. In this case it could be something simple as a read only configuration file!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

In this case I didn’t load any files into lightburn. Rather, I created a square in LB and then calibrated by adjusting the size of that square until it cut within 0.1mm of a 50x50mm square. On most laser you can have LB do this calculation and store it to avoid having to manually do anything

[@home-lab]

@@SteveMakesEverything I understand that you could not add the corrections to LB. I was hoping to find a way you cloud store the corrections in LB. I hoped it was something simple as a readonly file.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@home-lab Yeah this is why I raised the issue. There isn't a way you can store these settings anywhere else and then load them in when you need them. Any attempt to change a GRBL setting in the D1 will result in it just getting reset immediately, and you can't even set them and use them until you turn your laser off.

[@eddrm4685]

Does the Longer ray5 10 watt allow calibration with Lightburn. I purchased it a few months ago and it's still in the box. Been busy!

[@SteveMakesEverything]

While I haven't specifically tried it, it should since it uses a traditional Arduino-based controller. The Xtool controller is kind of unique in that there are essentially 2 different firmwares running - one for XCS and on for Lightburn that supports GRBL. The challenge is that on the GRBL side, Xtool prohibits any configuration changes.

[@eddrm4685]

@@SteveMakesEverything Thank you for the info. When I get the time to set it up I'll post an update here.

[@SteveMakesEverything]

@@eddrm4685 Always great to have people share their opinions and discoveries here.

[@lewy7601]

The kerf is the reason that can not be 100% presice cut

[@SteveMakesEverything]

That's only part of the problem. The actual size wouldn't be a problem if the X and Y dimensions were the same and that has nothing to do with kerf.

[@derekjenkinson8014]

Lightburn can account for kerf