Last night I made LVL1′s hackerspace passport using our Full Spectrum Engineering laser. It really was not that difficult. I used Chris Cprek’s LVL1 logo image for the stamp. It is the Plenary Gear logo at the top left of this page.
I used laserable rubber for this project. Even though it is low-odor you can still smell it. It smells like burning rubber from a car.
To laser the image, I took the original image and made it black and white. I removed the blue background and cleaned it up a bit using Gimp. I then imported it into Inkscape where I mirrored the image. The letters have to be in mirror image or it will not stamp correctly. Next, I ‘printed’ to the laser cutter. The Full Spectrum Engineering interface to driving the laser is pretty darned good. If you are reading this post and do not have a laser, check out Full Spectrum, they are a real good value for your money and highly recommended.
I also cut a wooden back for the rubber out of some 1/8″ baltic birch plywood scrap I had laying around. I used double stick tape to tape the rubber onto the plywood backing. Easy. Finally I hot melt glued a handle onto the stamp. Interestingly, the handle came from the Louisville Slugger Museum and it is a scrap from when a baseball bat is cut out on their lathe.
I used a stamp pad from office depot which worked well and Jon was able to stamp his passport for the first time! I also made another stamp with the Lady Ada graphic from Adafruit. That also came out well.
Very cool! Also check out our stamp tutorial and Hackerspace Passports!
Should the larger stamps be curved like -) so the pressure per square inch is better than a flat stamp -] and applied with a rolling action.
Still I like the growth of laser etched stamps.
Awesome, it’s cool to see the local hackerspace featured on the blog.