Baseball

Here I show the early design, an intermediate stage and the final drawing of my latest stencil of SymArt.

I attempted to raise the complexity of the design (my first oval stencil) and introduce an even larger assortment of colors and pen tip sizes into the final drawing.

This was my first attempt using 130 lb cardstock, to help reduce any buckling or stretching of the paper from the very wet inks, especially the metallic inks. The backside of the paper is very dry and even/smooth. I will likely use 130 lb cardstock going forward, as it also had firmer and smoother feel while drawing than 65 lb cardstock.

This drawing was the most time consuming I tried to date with my stencils, as I added blocks manually outside of the stencil using a ruler - semi-freehanded if you will.

Sketch book - note the numerous details and color trials

Early Outlines

intermediate stage

Variety of pens 

Baseball final artwork

Baseball 

With MLB Spring training getting started and the opening day for the 2019 season only about 6 weeks away, I thought that a baseball themed design was in order.

I loaded the baseball theme design into the Boss laser LS2436 with the 4-inch focal length optics.

Here are some Lessons Learned:

To set up my standard 10 in by 12 in rectangular piece of plexiglass it's best to only remove the center eight blades.

I had to rerun the outermost oval (30 mm per second) for 15% power because at that speed my first try at 10% power did not cut all the way through. On the second run, the trick is to either set layers at 1% power, either on-board or in RDworks software, so that fall through layers do not get recut. Something very low say 1% power so the laser won't fire. Then only assign the higher power or the lower speed (or both) to the layer to be recut. In the future I'll avoid this problem and make sure my Concentric Circle test samples all of the head speeds that will actually be in the design run.

Note that we are no longer adjusting the compressor pressure away from the default set by the manager.

I am now deleting my files after I'm done. The on-board memory max's out at 99 files regardless of size.

The photos show that all the cuts are very clean. I report that there are essentially no cracks or divots on the back side, nor were there any burn or char marks (either on the backside tape or on the plexiglass). This is proof that the laser is well-aligned and has a good beam cross section. Additionally, there was very little rubbing alcohol & terry cloth cleaning that I needed to do on the surface of the plexiglass stencil parts; debris was kept to a minimum.

Design size is 8.8 inches by 6.3 inches

Outer oval and baseball, bat, field and scoreboard

middle and inner ovals

partial sampling of the small pieces

Standard Tests

Starting with my upcoming baseball themed Stencil run, I am now performing a standardized 20 second concentric 3 circle test to see what minimum power is need to cut through the 1/12th inch extruded plexiglass.

I tried 15%/20%25% power and all cut through evenly cleanly. Previously, powers as high as 30% were required in mid to late 2018. However, now that the laser is so well aligned and the beam cross section is nearly circular, I'm able to use half the power to achieve full cutting. You are all encouraged to run similar quick tests to find the minimum power needs; running at lower powers will length the tube life and minimize debris in the chamber.

Notice from the photos below how smooth and crisp the cut edges appear.