Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How To: DIY Among Us keychains using makeblock | xTool Laserbox”.
Welcome back to the channel today, i am going to show you how to create these awesome, keychains and pins that have a faux enamel pin effect using a laser cutter and some nail polish for this video we’re partnering with xtool. They provide a variety of professional and intelligent tools for craftspeople makers, diy-ers, educators and more and for this video they provide us with an awesome laser, the laser box pro by make block we’ll get back to that laser in a few minutes. The first time i encountered this effect was at a maker faire when mandy stultz came up to me and gave me this adorable little bunny pen, it’s from the happy bunny army, you can go check it out at happybunnyarmy.com. They spread these pins around the world. Just to share a little bit of love, but the cool thing is is that this was made on a laser cutter and it looks like an enamel pen at a glance, even though it is made of wood, not brass, and so i wanted to share the process With you on how to make them and maybe share a few tips to help save you some time and effort along the way.
The first thing you’re going to need is a laser cutter or engraver. Then you’re going to need your materials, such as three millimeter plywood. You could use any material really as long as nail polish will stick to it, but i’m using three millimeter plywood and nail polish. You can also add sharpies to that list. This is the laser box pro by make block at first glance. It might look like a lot of the other lasers you’ve seen, but once you get under the hood on this thing, you’ll see it is an absolute beast.
Let’S go over a few of the awesome features in the laser box. Pro, for example, it’s got a cutting area of roughly 20 inches by 12 inches, which is pretty big. If you open up the lid here, you’ll see a few nice things, for example these gas shocks. I love this. It opens stays open. It feels solid, and here you can see the camera which allows you to do things like identify materials that you’ve purchased from them or use your own materials. You can also draw things and have the camera identify it for later cutting inside the laser you’ll find that it has built-in internal cooling and the cooling tank on this thing is about twice the size you see on other lasers, which means you can cut longer and It will stay cooler longer without overheating and look at these big fat, steel, linear rails that will last longer and stay truer than aluminum versions, and this drive belt is probably the fattest drive belt. I’Ve seen on a laser of this kind. If we look over here on the head, we can see that it has built-in air assist, which means cleaner cuts and no external air pump and that’s fantastic. There’S all kinds of safety features as well.
You open the lid, it stops, cutting and there’s an external air filter. These are all things that, if you had it in the classroom, you would absolutely need to have the user experience on this machine is pretty awesome as well. It works offline, which means you can connect to it with ethernet, with usb with wi-fi load. The software move stuff around visually load, dxf files into it for cutting and get this.
You can even draw a picture and have it engrave it and cut it without. Turning on your computer now, this is a 40 watt co2, laser cutter, which means it can cut through pretty much woods. Leathers cloth, plastics things like that. You can’t do things like stainless steel, but you can mark them if you spray it with a special coating to find out more about the laser box. Go to the link below the first step, of course, as with any project is to design your file with the laser box. I simply made a drawing of the characters from the game among us and brought it into the software to be able to engrave it.
One tip here is engraving your outlines. The deeper you make. These outlines the easier it is at least, if you’re clumsy like me to color in the full fill patterns with nail polish later, without crossing the lines a nice deep engrave is going to make it look. Much better after you’ve got it cut and engraved it’s time to start coloring it. I experimented with a few different methods. I used sharpies to fill in my outlines and that worked really well, but be cautioned if you use sharpie, you can’t put a clear coat on it later because it will smear that sharpie. If you plan on putting a clear coat over it, either just leave it. Your black outline bare and engraved or use maybe an ink that won’t dissolve under the sharpie or even black nail polish simply coating the entire surface in black nail. Polish first can do that, and then you can do your coloring after that. The next step, of course, is adding your color. You can get creative here, you can do you know solid colors, mixed colors different patterns and shapes you’re going to want to let it dry in between them again. If you’re clumsy, like me, you’ll mess up your other colors.
If you do them all at once, so it took me a while. I did solid colors first and then came back and did another. You know whatever different color had to be done after you have all of your colors done, you’re going to want to put a clear coat over it. Ideally that’ll help protect it and make it last longer, but remember what i said about using a sharpie. If you put that clear coat over a sharpie, it’s going to smear, it’s going to make you sad. The final part of this is the size of your design.
I noticed that the enamel pen effect was most convincing if the design was small so that the the nail polish kind of bubbled up and had a nice, constant, color and – and you know – was just a solid, perfect coat on big areas. I had a problem getting a solid, perfect coat, really just look at this shot. You can compare the two they both in my opinion, look fine, but the smaller one is more convincing. So if you’re doing something like a pen that you’re going to put on your shirt, you know maybe a smaller one would be more effective than something large. Then again, you might be a better artist than me and able to pull off larger areas. Maybe it’s just a matter of doing more coats.
I hope you enjoyed this video and i would love to see your results on social media post them on twitter or post them on facebook and tag us, and we will share them as well. We’D love to see those faux enamel pins that you’re making at home with your lasers, you .