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Greetings,

First post. Just getting started in picking, I ordered an EOD set from Sparrows with a few extra pick's from the tuxedo set to round out most of the locks I'll be working with (I deal mostly with filing cab's, credenza's, lockers, that kind of thing). Because of the extra picks, and heat shrink I put on the pick's to practice with (my hands were getting pretty raw from the bare picks ) the original but very nice velcro/nylon case was a bit tight. The original case was divided up into two sections, I wanted a spot for the mini door jim and the taller picks. My wife is a leather worker so she designed a case in the same fashion as the original case, but a bit taller and wider, with 3 sections, out of motorcycle leather. I cut a piece of kydex for the back tallest pocket to keep the rigidity and protect the picks from bending if it's carried in the pocket, it's cemented to the leather so it won't work up and out, and laser engraved a keyhole on the front as an identifier and tribute to the sparrow picks. Anyway here it is!

Kick ass homebrew. Love the laser engraving.

Thanks! Laser is homebrew as well

Case look factory made mate. Great work. Do share more on this homebrew laser.

Welcome, and nice case.

Your wife has incredible talent! Pay attention Sparrows this may be your future!

Thanks guys. I built the laser for my wife, we looked into buying a commercial one but a decent quality one was just way...way out of our price range. She always gets requests for peoples initials, names, that kind of thing in her leather work, and we like to do everything we can in house. It's certainly not as powerful as the commercial units, it will cut light acrylic, light leather, but that's not what we wanted, engraving was the main purpose and at that, it excels.




Does fine detail in wood really well (just testing, we sped it up 4x after this test to the speed we did the above video) I tested with wood as to not waste leather, and it smells way better (I've now built a ventilation system for it)


Finished test (note the scrap piece of wood I found in the pole shed for testing had a strip of wax right down the grain in the middle, that's why it's a bit blurry right in the middle, reflected the laser a bit ):

Pretty slick looking case!

And just like everyone else whose read you built your own homebrew laser, let see some pics of that and my be even a how too.?....

Everything in this thread screams of awesome, win, and quality. Great job and a very lovely case .

That is truly incredible. Love it. Also love when new gents come aboard with fun things to share and teach.

Do you think Sparrows would have an issue with you using their logo?

I didn't use the actual sparrows logo, I made up my own keyhole vector (to be fair, they all look like...well keyholes ) in inkscape to use, that way I can scale it to any size. I sent sparrows the same pictures and he said it was a nice case.

I only really have an early picture of the machine during testing. It started life as a desktop CNC machine, I designed a mount for the laser and a friend 3d printed it, the Z axis is used for laser focus, the spindle speed output on the board is used for laser power (shading), basically, it's a big black and white laser printer . The machine has evolved since this picture (I'll take another more recent picture once the work area is cleaned up ) with ventilation (4" duct with a booster fan venting outside), more shielding so you don't always have to wear glasses, I added an arcade button (yes, like the push to punch red buttons) as an emergency stop in case something gets too warm or I mess up and it isn't lasering where I think it should be. A lot of time was spent figuring out what speed the gantry should move at and matching that with the laser power, so if you're moving at "X" inches per minute, you need "X" laser power to match, otherwise it's too light or you burn too deep. Also the optimum distance for the laser from the material, each material, even each different color of leather absorbs light differently so lots of testing to determine what distances and power would work best, and then keeping samples burned for reference to go back to if you're using that same leather again down the road. I also had issues with the initial laser lense so I sourced another and filed it to fit. I'm working on the bed area (wood isn't the best idea for laser engraving...) and changing it out to a sheet of metal, and we'll use magnets for hold down clamps instead of weights or painters tape (painters tape is great but it can leave residue on the finished product).

Here's the machine and one of the tests, burned on deer hide scrap, I took a picture of my truck, vectorized it, converted it to gcode, and test burned it, original source photo and finished test:

Machine (early version)


Test picture with background removed to vectorize:


Finished test, little dark in the tire area but detailed enough you can make out the glass in the windshield!


But I digress, this isn't a laser forum so back to picking! (to which I have much....much to learn)

Me like!

Im stunned. Awesome.

Neat stuff! You're definitely gonna fit right in around here. lol

A big welcome to you sir. I'm Mike. Very glad you're here.