THE INVENTABLES WORKSHOP

I did a quick project to demonstrate some of our new products.  As soon as I saw the green on white two color HDPE I thought of the Starbucks logo.  I thought a nice, deep 60° V Carving of this would look great. The Inventables products I used on this project are: Two Color HDPE, Green on White, 12" x 12" x 1/2" Vectric V Carve Pro 60° V Bit. Artwork You want to use the highest resolution image you can get.  This will give the best bitmap to vector conversion.  I searched for "starbucks logo" using Google Image Search.  You can use the "Search Tools" option to filter for larger images.  I found one that was over 2000 pixels wide.  You could search for a vector file, but I wanted to go through the more complex process of working with a bitmap for this post.  A vector file would save several steps and give the best results. V Carve Process Start a new project in V Carve with the size of the material you are working with.  I my case tha

I've been working on using the Shapeoko 2 to mill circuit boards and I thought I'd share my experiences with everyone since we get a lot of questions on the subject. Short answer: it totally works and gives you nice clean lines. But make sure you nail the z-depth and feed speeds. Ok, so you're going to need a couple of things here. 1. An X-Carve  or other suitable milling machine 2. Circuit Board blanks , Inventables has them in 2x3" and 4x6" sizes, single and double-sided. 3. Good bits for circuit board milling. I recommend these. Once you get all that assembled, design your circuit board. I used Eagle to set up a "stress test" of the machine, with progressively smaller component sizes and trace widths. I then exported that as a .dxf, then used Adobe Illustrator to convert that to an .svg so I could import it into Makercam . If you're using a more professional CAM software, you could probably import the .dxf directly

Inventables will be at SxSW Create Friday March 7th through Sunday March 9th in Austin. This FREE and open-to-the-public event kicks off at 11:00 am. If you will be in Austin you can catch an Interactive or Film Shuttle to The Long Center for the Performing Arts to experience all the mind-expanding and hands-on fun. We're going to be making a big product announcement and will have demo stations set up at the event for people to step up and make something.  We look forward to seeing you there.