On the last night of October, also called the Eve of All Saints’ Day, the United States and Canada celebrate Halloween, an ancient Celtic holiday. Recently, the holiday has become popular in Europe and Russia.
We are ready for 2021 Halloween!
Invitations were prepared and sent!
A couple of weeks ago, our laboratory received a number of samples of painted acrylic. In this connection, we thought that it would be great to come up with DIY decorations that every CO2 laser owner could make for themselves.
To realize this idea, we needed to develop a design. We prefer to work in Coral Draw.
But you can use any other program for vector images.
On the Internet, we found a lot of nice Halloween images, but we decided to do as much as possible with our own hands, starting with the design.
So we did! Our patterns are minimalistic and simple. As you see, they look like children’s freehand drawings.
Give your imagination and creativity free will and cut out any figurines and images you like.
In order to translate the drawings into physical models, we need:
1) Acrylic, 4 mm thick, coated on one side with black paint (you may choose any other color).
2) 40 watt CO2 laser (Endurance upgrade kit).
- Double-sided tape or glue.
- Pins, magnets.
First, we export our SVG drawings to the software (LightBurn) of our laser machine.
The size of the figurines depends on your choice and the size of the available acrylic.
If you do not know what laser parameters you need to get the optimal result use our test table of modes with different speeds and number of passes, it is attached to the article.
We used the following parameters:
We set the focal point at 5 mm above the surface of the processed material.
We also used a vertical airflow for the best result.
Warning! Start cutting only after careful preparation and inspection of the ventilation system. The laser evaporates acrylic when cutting. The generated smoke is hazardous to one’s health and has an extremely unpleasant smell.
Also, do not forget that you should exercise the utmost care when operating the laser. When in contact with skin, the laser causes severe burns.
For safe work, we recommend that you purchase a box for the removal of combustion products, one of which you can find on our website
An Endurance customizable protective frame (shield) for your engraving / cutting machine
After we had finished cutting we removed the aggressive smoke from the box, we took out the workpiece with our figurines and carefully separated (squeezed) the parts out of the workpiece.
Now we have an almost finished product! The cutting process took us just 5 minutes!
If there are some joints left caused by acrylic melting you can use a heated scalpel to cut them through.
The edges of our cut-out decorations were slightly rough, so we carefully made them even with a file and then sanded them.
Now it remains only to decorate the house for the holiday!
Using double-sided tape, you can stick the decorations to walls, lampshades, windows, or any other surface. It depends on your desire.
It is also possible to glue pins to the rear side of the figurines and used them as badges.
We glued magnets to the finished products to decorate refrigerators and other metal household items.
Based on the materials of this article, you can come up with your own projects, the final result of which might be much more complicated and magnificent than our simple souvenirs. So you are welcome to share your results with us and our friendly community!
