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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Wow. Well done! How did you do the markings? Do I understand it right that you also made the fasteners?

Were the holes at the top routed or done by hand?

I drew up the markings in Macromedia Freehand MX, exported as an EPS, opened that in Fontforge, made it into a font, then used F-Engrave to V-carve them.

The fasteners were sourced from a local hardware store and modified w/ a hacksaw, a wire crimping tool which was just the right size to hold them, and a file.

The holes and outline were cut using a CNC following G-code output by MakerCAM (a fork of the Flash file PartKam).

That was a _long_ time ago, and the free software has gotten much better/easier, and these days I work for a company which makes integrated software for the CNC machines which we sell.

Beautiful work. I should do some blog posts on metalworking. It's so satisfying. I very much miss my Canadian workshop (2 lathes, big one and a small one for precision stuff), saw, mill (Bridgeport clone), shaper, 8x4' plasma cutter, welding tools) , what I have now is so limited in comparison. Otoh it's fine, all those tools require a lot of upkeep and if you use them infrequently then that's a lot of overhead.

I'd love to see more things you've made.

I'm a corporate shill these days, so it's mostly on our official file-sharing site:

https://cutrocket.com/u/WillAdams

(and mostly wood/bamboo)

A bit stalled because I've been working on:

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

Though I will note that I got into small-scale and inexpensive CNC because I couldn't figure out how to fit a Bridgeport that was being sold locally for less than scrap value in working condition into my basement.

I've been debating getting a lathe or making a Gingery Lathe or going the 3D print route:

https://www.printables.com/model/1048400-open-lathe-v1

I've found that everywhere I lived within a kilometer there also lives a guy who has a complete machine shop in their garage. The problem is to find that guy. But it is really more than a coincidence by now. And once you find that guy you usually also find a friend because machinists are almost without exception nice people.

Same, although these days, all-too-often one learns of this when one sees a garage sale notice that the shop is being sold (picked up some pretty nice tools thus).

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