Laser-cutting old vinyl LPs

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By Sean Michael Ragan
Posted 2010/03/19 @ 9:21 am
Category 3D Printing, Energy, Furniture

Personally, these laser-cut plastic end tables by Israel’s Studio Groovy (Fair warning: I couldn’t actually find them on their Flash-y website) are not to my taste, but I really like the fact that that they put some old vinyl records in their laser cutter and managed to make something fairly cool out of them. Bonus: The table on the left uses the cut-out from the table on the right as decoration, so there’s very little waste. [via Recyclart]

Update: I might do better in life, in general, if I would, you know, use my eyes more. As a commenter pointed out, close inspection of the photograph indicates that the detail on the left-hand table is not, in fact, exactly the cut-out from the table on the left. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t do it that way, at least… [Thanks, Click!]

More:
Love is in the Air (cut vinyl record silhouettes)

In the Maker Shed

11 Responses to Laser-cutting old vinyl LPs

hbetts on March 19th, 2010 at 9:42 am said:

On their website under Design in the “Wood” section — go figure.

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- Sean Michael Ragan on March 19th, 2010 at 9:44 am said:
  
  Thanks for letting us know! Cheers! -Sean
  
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Click on March 19th, 2010 at 9:54 am said:

Thanks for the post, looks cool. One note – The table on the left, when examined more closely, does not appear to use the cut-out from the table on the right. It merely discards the outer rim, and other than that there appears to be no appreciable difference between the pieces. We’ve been duped!

That aside, It appears you could make one from the negative of another, though it could be a bit more challenging since it would be made of many tiny pieces rather than the original design’s continuous piece.

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zimage.myopenid.com on March 19th, 2010 at 9:55 am said:

The left table simply lacks the black border that the right one has. You’ll notice that both tables have the celtic braid as white-space.

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jason1729 on March 19th, 2010 at 10:11 am said:

Don’t laser cut vinyl. Unless you want to release a gas that’s posionous to you and destructive to the electronic parts of your laser cutter.

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- Sean Michael Ragan on March 19th, 2010 at 10:19 am said:
  
  But I’m curious: Is that chlorine gas you’re talking about? Or something else? And where did you hear/read that? Thanks!
  
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potentato on March 19th, 2010 at 10:13 am said:

I thought cutting vinyl with lasers was bad? TechShop told me it created toxic fumes and/or damaged the cutter. Is there a trick here, or is there a certain kind of laser cutter used?

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- bdring on March 19th, 2010 at 10:45 am said:
  
  I saw something similar a while ago and tried it on my laser.
  
  Bad idea.
  
  I had a lot of brownish colored gas that instantly rusted any uncoated metal or even anything with a scratch. That is with the exhaust blower running.
  
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  Sean Michael Ragan on March 19th, 2010 at 10:54 am said:
  
  “Brownish” strongly implies that it’s chlorine gas, which is, yes, bad for exposed metals and bad for you. Good info, thanks.
  
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John Park on March 19th, 2010 at 2:30 pm said:

Yes, the laser cutter manuals all say to avoid cutting anything that releases chlorine gas, which includes vinyl and PVC.

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cspartikus on March 20th, 2010 at 5:08 pm said:

I learned here… when everybody got their hands on the laser cutter for the first time and started to laser their moleskins that laser+vinyl=bad…. didnt I?

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