The latest from SNG Studio for the week beginning on June 12th.
Somewhere along the line I started thinking of things I could and wanted to do with the laser cutter and one of those things was a wooden slot car track. As a boy I raced on the commercial wooden tracks around town and loved it. Most of these tracks are at homes where my club races and most are wooden. Although I have a plastic track at home it never was quite the same thing for me.
The wooden track was quiet and smooth. Wide so when you moved through the turns you didn’t come off the track. There was no clackety-clack.
The above image is a typical commercial track style. Most of the home tracks that are wood today have a detailed miniature world feel as my home plastic track does.
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To make a wooden track you need a router, MDF particle board and elbow grease to get the job done. You needed to use expensive copper or stainless steel braids for the contacts. Add to that recessing the router cut to accommodate the braid. A tool to run the braid and glue to hold it down. This has always held me back. It hit me that I could laser cut sections of medium density pine plywood like butter with this laser. So I designed, in photoshop, a piece of straight track, placed it into Lightburn (laser cutting software) and traced it as a vector file and cut it. I used copper tape that is adhesive backed and conductive. Copper tape replaces the braid. It is thinner than braid and lays flush on the track. Less expensive and easy to use. I have used it in the past and it works well. A lot of people are using it on homemade tracks these days.
Here are the results.
Oh and by the way I did get a bit more done on the Maserati this week. There is still a lot to do. These slot car models take time.
The track is wider than commercial plastic home tracks. I’ll be able to make curves too, even have the lanes narrow to the inside to simulate actual driving on the full size tracks. The possibilities are endless.
My plan is to make track kits available. You build a wooden table and mount my track to it. Paint it, add the copper tape and you have a wooden track at home with minimal trouble. I will be making my own home track into a wooden track soon to show it can be done.
Next up, I decided that I need to do some art with the laser cutter. I have always loved shadow boxes and the miniature worlds you can create inside them. Some of you that know me well will recall I have made a few in my past from scenes from “Wind and the Willows” to starry night skies with the moon. I thought it might be cool to do some Sci-Fi related shadow boxes that were lighted and had a 3D effect. I started with something simple I could make by the end of this week. I picked this classic scene from Ray Harryhausen’s “Beast from 20,000 Fathoms”. The Rhedosaurus attacking the lighthouse was always one of my favorites. The backlite and shadow of the beast was eerie and haunting and I thought this might make a good candidate for a first effort.
Here are some pictures that show the process. I drew up the parts in photoshop taken from the bronze sculpture. Traced them in Lightburn and cut them in bass wood. This week’s SNG Studio update video shows the whole process. It better explains how this is done.
I hand-painted everything. All the parts were laser engraved. I was very happy with the end results. It’s meant to be seen in the dark and backlit as in the film but it’s painted well enough to make sense if there’s light in the room.
Saturday morning Ventura Rocketeers launched their rockets. As always it was a great launch and Mary got to launch her own rocket this time, the Vanguard Monet handmade by Steve Neill.
I launched my own design, Rocket Rider that went over 1500 ft and 308 mph. It was very successful. Here’s a video from the day. Sadly the iPhone recording for Mary’s flight didn’t make it, but at the next launch we will make sure and get video of her Vanguard Monet which flew perfectly.
Next week I’m starting on a new laser cutting project. This will be a miniature 1/32 garage for the slot car track that will be offered as a kit. I built something like it for my track in balsa years ago.
The garage will be the first of many items for the track to follow. This will also branch out into haunted houses and other builds and diorama kits as model kits modelers can build for display, not just for trains or slot car tracks.
Bottom line is that the possibilities are endless. I haven’t even touched on model airplane kits yet. Give me time.
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Love You Bunches!
Steve and Mary
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