chebe | Laser cutting Pride pins

Because of the month that's in it, I decided to take some scrap wood and laser-cut out some small Pride flags, to be worn as badges or jewellery. It turned out to be not as easy as it sounds.

I sourced some flag .svgs from wikipedia, and flailed about in Inkscape until I had removed the colour fills, and stroked the paths. Saved out as plain .svg, and brought into Luban for processing. Because I am dealing with a mystery wood, 0.3cm thick, the Definitive Guide really was just a guideline in choosing settings. I had to play around a little.

Trial and much error
Photo by chebe

Um. Okay, the power setting is cutting through the wood completely, everywhere. And causing holes in some places. First thing, the lines inside the flag need to be a separate path, meaning separate .svg, from the outline, if I want to be able to give them different power settings. Secondly, the .svg paths retraced themselves multiple times. Time to go back into Inkscape and try and remove all the duplication. (Which you can conceptualise as much, much more flailing.)

Much trial and some error
Photo by chebe

Greatly improved, now I just had to learn how to manipulate the different paths in Luban, and play around with a few settings.

My settings were:
- For the inner (engraved) part; 2 passes, 0.1 depth, at 20% power.
- For the outer (cut) part; 3 (maybe 4) passes, 0.4 depth, at 90% power.

And hey, that kinda worked. The next part is to paint the sections with acrylic paint, but I don't have the right colours. Then just glue brooch pin backs onto the back, and done.

That looks like a flag alright
Photo by chebe