Cardboard cask

[modeller_masa]

I don't like barrels in kits. It requires heavy paint work to make it fine.

 

I have a fiber laser cutter, which can cut cherry wood up to 6mm. It is so useful that I already packed my Proxxon table saw. Also, I bought some thick cardboards for my next project. The brown paper on the picture is 1mm thick. I challenged to make a DIY cardboard cask to replace kits.

 

I spent several hours for measuring, designing, and CAM. Now I only needed five minutes to print each cardboard cask sheet.

 

The left design is final. It is very stable and easy to assemble. I used CA glue only.

 

I spent about 15 minutes assembling each cask.

 

After that, I glued a black paper strip and applied shellac as a varnish. I'll build another smaller cask in the same process.

 

cask 31x21mm.zip

 

These are my design files. It is free to use.  

 

[modeller_masa]

I made a bucket using the same method.

 

I used a false-bucket structure.  

[wefalck]

What laser-cutter do you actually have?

[modeller_masa]

5 minutes ago, wefalck said:

laser-cutter

I bought a Sculpfun S10 laser cutter with some accessories at $500. It uses a 10W output fiber-laser module, which consumes more than 20W of electricity. The cutting performance is equivalent to commercial kit and more sharper.

[robert952]

Nice work.  Look like the making of a side gig.  

 

I assume that's an air line of some kind on the side.  

[wefalck]

Just read on their Web-site. It feeds indeed a nozzle coaxial to the laser-beam to blow out burnt material, so that it does not obstruct and scatter the laser, thus making the cut narrower with less charring (my interpretation, not their sales-pitch ...).

 

However, if I read correctly, it works from bit-images, not from vector graphics. I wonder, how well it would be doing on lines oblique to axes of the machine and on curves. 

Edited February 12, 2023 by wefalck

[modeller_masa]

5 minutes ago, wefalck said:

a nozzle coaxial to the laser-beam to blow out burnt material

Exactly. An air compressor is mandatory to cut any material thicker than 0.8 mm. The Sculpfun brand offers all accessory options including the $55 air compressor, and it works pretty well. The assembly is a bit tricky, but it is definitely better than raw aluminium pipe cut models. 

 

These are options I purchased with the S10.

 

 

Nevermind the software. The software isn't free. I'm using LaserGRBL, which is open source and free. The LaserGRBL does most of Laser CNC cut. I use an open source freeware Inkscape to make a vector gcode.

[wefalck]

So it can use G-Code? Somehow I had the impression that the driver that comes with it is made for bit-images.

[modeller_masa]

Yes. I use the J Tech laser g-code plugin for Inkscape.