So, this is the setting for the power switch on my Potato Enrichment Kit. As you can see, it fits into a groove that goes a little less than halfway into the top layer. I achieved this by making the laser “scribble” over the area I wanted the switch to fit into at about 30% of its cutting power.
I set this up using an extension for Inkscape called Hatch Fill. (It’s here if you want to try this yourself.) This is part of a set of extensions for the Egg-Bot, which is a pretty neat machine that draws on eggs. It was designed to allow the Egg-Bot to fill in large areas with a pen, but I found another use for it.
Getting the power settings on this right was a pain; I don’t recommend it for anything where you need to cut something to a very exact depth. That said, I use the hatch fill in three different places on this design; the other two are sinks for the extra tiny “LEDs” around the eye piece and on the giant fake plastic IC. This is the only one where the depth matters.
[…] sunken but not cut all the way through? Dallas Makerspace member Haley Moore (toenolla) wrote up a short blog post about a trick that allows you to cut IN […]