FastLED wins again…
Originally shared by Ben Delarre
This weekends CNC + LED project. Its Chinese New Year so we cut this fairly traditional pattern into some 12mm plywood. I then thinned it down from the back side till it was thin enough to let the light glow nicely. With a second layer of 12mm plywood to act as a spacer. I then added 140 ws2812 leds to a thinner sheet which I will screw into the back.
Came out lovely, still have a lot of sanding and finishing to do but the effect is awesome.
Wow- looks absolutely great!
How hard was the machining? Any tips?
So I did it on my Shapeoko. Wasn’t too hard really at all. Used a 1/4" 2 flute upcut bit to keep the bottoms of the pocket clean since its hard to sand inside them. I would advise against using plywood again though since there are many imperfections where the plywood chipped away when it was thin. Going to be a lot of sanding in my future.
All excellent learnings.
What would you use? Just pine?
What are the dimensions roughly?
This is about 550mm x 280mm i think. Something like that anyway. I extended my shapeoko to a 600x300 cutting area.
I’d probably use pine if I did it again yeah. Or perhaps modify it for laser cutting out of several layers of thin plywood perhaps and then glue together to get the same effect.
That would also still allow you the two tone effect from the differing layers which was the whole reason I used plywood in the first place.
Nicely done. Love that it’s just the natural wood over the entire face.
Wow - very creative! Great job. 
Laser-cutting plywood isn’t the easiest thing to do – it tends to burn, particularly if it’s thicker than 3mm. What you can do, however, is use a laser cutter to mark the plywood and cut long the lines. Or cut out multiple thin pieces and glue together.
If you do cut wood with a laser, know that there will be some discolouration along the edges where the heat scorches the wood.
Yeah. All a question of laser power and feed rate. However I was suggesting that you could cut thin laminates and then glue them together to save on having to pocket the wood with a cnc. Something I need to experiment with though.
High power and high speed is meant to be the solution, but I ran into problems making my map of Black Rock City. The plywood was 7mm (1/4") thick for starters, and the laser cutter was not able to run past about half of its rated power of 60W. I ended up simply marking the plywood and cutting it out using more traditional woodworking tools.
