Fun with my M3

[dadof4]

We are snowbirds in Florida where I have my home CNC's little brother, an M3 with a JTech 2.8 watt laser. I always look forward to using the M3. This is my third year using it. I remain extremely impressed with this little CNC. This year for Christmas cards I used it to make ornaments using Vcarve, UGS and Lightburn software. I designed the ornaments including the parts to be engraved in Vcarve using the job origin position as the center. Then I cut out blanks using UGS. I also cut out one blank with a 1/16 hole in the job center along with a jig to align the blanks in Lightburn. I exported the areas to be engraved to an STL file.
I imported the STL file into Lightburn. I set the job origin in Lightburn to job's center. I locked down the areas that would be constant so I only needed to change the variables for each ornament. I placed the blank with the hole in it in the jig to set the lasers origin position by lining up the laser with the hole. Replacing the blank with the hole with a blank to be engraved I started making the ornaments.  Having Lightburn return to its original position after each engraving there was no need to align the laser after each engraving.   I proceeded to make about 40 "Christmas card ornaments". I finished by applying a couple of coats of Minwax PolyShade on the engraved ornaments.

[Bruce]

I haven't tried producing anything of any quantity count yet. Finding a process like you worked out is key. Nice work.

[Karten Products]

Hey Dadof4.
I set up a nested spoil board for making coasters. I had to make 300 of them for an order, and I was able to fit (6) at a time on the platform. When each job was done, I'd just nest another 6 and hit go.
For the nest, I actually milled nested circles in the spoil board. When this gets replaced, I will probably just burn a grid and circles in the new spoil board. It makes centering the coasters really easy.