Laserable offcuts

[Sam Kelly]

I've just been rough-sorting the huge piles of offcuts next to the machine. They could do with another going-over for sensible arrangement, and putting into some proper storage (I borrowed two empty members' boxes for the time being), but for the moment the storage schema is as follows.

* Clear colourless acrylic, one box, stuffed to bursting. A lot of really nice pieces in there, with the protective covering on.
* Coloured acrylic, misc., one box, about half-full. Again, some really nice pieces in there, but much smaller.
* Acrylic, various, pieces too large to fit the laser cutter bed: stacked up vertically to the left of coolbot.
* MDF/ply, mostly odd shapes or engraved on one side, but a lot of good usable stuff. One cardboard box and the purpose-built storage box.

At least for the next month or two, we can pretty much guarantee that anyone who needs less than an A5-sized piece of clear acrylic will be able to find it in the box, and if your design is (or can be made to be) long and thin then you're probably in luck whatever happens. Same goes for MDF.

I did find a lot of pieces with almost no usable space left on them - those are in a dilapidated cardboard box by the three-week box. I don't think we need to be as assiduous about putting acrylic in the offcuts box as we have been - my rule of thumb would be that if it's got less than about six contiguous square inches on it, it's not worth cluttering the box up with.

Do we want to re-establish the materials donation tin, given that we've got so much right now?

--
Sam Kelly, http://www.eithin.co.uk/

That's it.  We're not messing around anymore, we're buying a bigger dictionary.  -  Tibor Fischer, The Thought Gang.

[Sam Cook]

I did find a lot of pieces with almost no usable space left on them - those are in a dilapidated cardboard box by the three-week box. I don't think we need to be as assiduous about putting acrylic in the offcuts box as we have been - my rule of thumb would be that if it's got less than about six contiguous square inches on it, it's not worth cluttering the box up with.

I would say that if the the pieces are to the point where they have no single area larger than say 10x10cm then they should just be ditched. We currently seem to have a ton of offcuts and whilst I realise it's lovely to find the small little bit that's perfect for what you want we seem to have a ton of them. 

If people can't stand to throw away the final 5cm^2 of material at least break off the stupid 5mm thick outline that really is no good for anyone. 

Also: Thanks a ton for doing this!

S