Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab

Inspired by a post on Adafruit Industries blog about someone who engraved "Don't Panic" on their Kindle 2, I decided to personalize the Kindle DX Graphite that I purchased to read large the huge stack of PDFs that my professors hand out in class.  This project turned out to be a mixed success; I hope that anyone thinking about using an Epilog laser can use what I've learned.

Jonathan Manton has written an Inkscape extension that, among other things, makes it easier to create polyhedra out of heavy paper that has been cut/scored using the Epilog Laser.

He writes:

I've developed an Inkscape extension to render the polyhedra nets I've been making the last few months. It can make nets for the platonic, archimedean, and archimedean dual solids. There are several options for tabs including tab and slot, no tabs (for showing rather that assembling), and a couple of options for tabs that can be glued.

The full writeup is here:
http://www.fabhub.net/entry.php?28-Inkscape-extension-for-polyhedra-nets

Goal:
Create a cheesecake platter and trophy for a series of cheesecake competitions related to the Fab Lab.

The other day I  found an object on Thingiverse that I wanted to make because it's close to Christmas. THE Christmas Tree Christmas Tree Ornament!

The design can be found here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:170

For current examples check our our flickr group.

Jim Witte writes:

I'm a mentor with the cu1to1 mentoring program (http://www.cu1to1.org). I brought my 10th grade mentee to the fablab to make jigsaw puzzles that I used to teach first grade cub scouts their "cub scout promise".

Here's a link to the youtube video showing the puzzle being made in the laser cutter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB0ZBCARGmo

My mentee did the design on the computer, we made 10 of the puzzles. I've attached a picture of the scouts and parents putting the puzzle together.

I sent the same picture and video to the cu1to1 mentoring program. My hope here is to build bridges between facilities like the fablab and programs like the cu1to1 mentoring program.