Weddings are expensive.
My fiance and I are extremely fortunate and grateful to have our families helping out with the cost of it, but even still the cost can be a strain. The main reason it is so expensive is the number of guests... multiply most numbers by 200 and you get a larger number.
My boss at home wants wedding favors. The problem with buying most favors is you either spend a lot of money on something nice/useful or cheap out and buy something lame for about 200 bucks.
I wanted to make something useful, personal, and somewhat affordable. Scoring points with the future wife is always good too. I decided personalized coasters was a good idea.
Using engraved cork backed with oak seemed like a good balance between quality and economy - I'll have to make 250 of them. Luckily for me my coworker had a drill press I can borrow which I'll attach my hole saw blade to. I've never done any laser engravings though...
I decided to get a Meterk 1500 mW laser engraver. All in all I am happy with the device. It's a formidable entry level product. Knowing what I know now from playing on the Meterk gives me confidence to get a DIY kit for my next laser engraving upgrade. That being said the engraver had its limitations. The largest, in my case, is the engraving envelope. The carving size is about an inch and a half square. My coaster is 3.5 inches so I'll be using multiple engraving patterns to fill the space. I can move my work piece to accommodate this but doing this by eyeballing it for 250 coasters would lead to inconsistent results... I need a jig/fixture to help me out.
Enter my 3D printer.
I came up with a design that holds the work piece (that's the fixture) and helps me align the laser relative to the work piece (that's the jig). I did some research and based my design off the 3-2-1 principle, except I ended up ditching the set screw clamp.
Finding the right clearance between the parts was tough. My first assembly was too loose and when the laser bed translated the fixture moved as well which made my engravings look "shakey". So rather than dialing in the sweet spot for clearances I printed the assembly line-to-line and sanded until I got a good fit.
All in all this was a fun build and my first with multiple and moving parts. Time to dial in my engraver and pump out some wedding favors!
