MIA Patch

[luke213]

Feel free anyone interested in making some designs have at it. If you come up with something send it to me and I'll get things around for a contest or something along those lines.

Take care

Luke

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[m4everybody]

I'd like a patch that says "MiA" or Michigan Airsoft on it.

[luke213]

Well I might have a cool option available shortly, guys who aren't familiar I'm a holster maker that's my day job so to speak. I do leather holsters, and I generate a fair amount of cut offs basically from my holster production, good leather but odd shapes and such. Well I ordered a laser engraver/cutter for the shop today. So once I get things dialed in and see what kind of things I can make it do. I might do some patches with that out of leather likely stitched to velcro since I've got the equipment to do that part fairly easily. Should be very durable and pretty dang cool looking. If it works out I'm sure you guys will see me posting examples and whatnot here. I will say I don't have a clue what cost will be, depends on how much time they take to make, and that sort of thing. Since I've never used the equipment anything I throw out would be a guess. But if I can do it, they should be very durable and a bit different than most other things out there. It would mean it could be very intricate, but only two tone or a mixture of color since it would be leather color dyed or natural, along with dark color for the burned area from the engraver.

Either way we'll see how it shakes out and if guys are interested, since I'm buying this for other stuff in my shop and if it works for both things great, if not I still have a million other things to use it for in the shop.

Luke

[Dr Black]

Wow,  that sounds great.  A leather patch won't really wear out and lose its color.  Would definitely be a head turner.

[luke213]

I think in natural leather it might be pretty cool too, mostly because it will take mud/dirt etc over time and weather which should give it a cool look over time.

Yeah it's going to be interesting to see how they shake out, if they turn out good I'm sure we'll do some stuff with them going forward;)

Luke

[Squib]

Natural leather sounds sick I'd love to have a few

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[luke213]

Hopefully I'll get some tests in before I go to Irene if not shortly after I should have some examples.

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[luke213]

Alright guys a little progress, got the laser engraver in today. NOTE this is super early, I know nothing about laser engraving, so it's a learning process to say the least. The good news is I'm pretty quick learning tech stuff;)

None the less I got this machine around noon, and I've spent a few hours setting up the cooling system and assembly and a couple hours doing tests and images. So I tossed MIA's logo on a piece of leather and cut it out to see how it would look. The quality of the image directly effects the quality of the engraving. So note this isn't a super high res or vector image which will make it much more detailed. But it works;)

So here is a quick example of natural leather with oil and nothing else. And this isn't necessarily the logo/design for the patch. A variation of this might become a normal patch but I don't like the shape etc for a patch, so there would be significant changes as well.

Either way wanted to post it but also note that it's super early in the fact that I've engraved like 5 things;)



Take care!

Luke

EDIT: I've done a bunch more stuff since posting this earlier testing various things on wood and leather with the machine to get an idea what it can do and more importantly how to do it. So I need some designs, if you guys have designs for patches etc that I can fiddle with and test shoot them my direction. I can covert them from JPG or pretty much any format. A note on designs Black is the color that is engraved, some stuff close to black dark grey and such seems to go with a lighter power automatically but line drawing is ideal. So hard edges etc, but it's capable of some pretty impressive small detail work so it doesn't have to be simple like say embroidery would have to be. @VooDoo you mentioned working on stuff hit me up if you have any progress;)

[TauterTwiggy]

That looks awesome, I can't wait to see what the finished product looks like.

[VooDoo]

I like where is going. Very unique.

[luke213]

Thanks guys likely going to be a bit before I have "finished" stuff but designs are step one. But I figured I'd share some of my other tests yesterday. Some wood, leather, and cardboard. The punisher skull is one of my favorites really shows the level of detail the machine is capable of, that image is about the size of a patch.









I'm sure as I spend more time with it I'll figure out more of what it's capable of and get a bit better so more to come;)

Luke

[VooDoo]

Those are awesome! Looks like a VERY cool toy to have at your disposal.

[Dr Black]

I love that punisher skill...  Dude nice work. 

[luke213]

Yep it's something I've been thinking about for a long time to do some cool holster related stuff. We'll see how patches and whatnot work with it. But at this point there are just allot of cool things it's capable of doing once I get everything really figured out end to end with it.

We'll see as I do more prints etc how I like it all but so far it's fairly easy to run once you get past the basics;)

Luke

[TauterTwiggy]

What strength is the laser you are working with? I was thinking of picking up a 1,000mw laser engraver myself to do decals on my plastic magazines.