Gweike-M3 on Craig Andera

Nova Labs CNC Shop ER Wrenches

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Steve from the Nova Labs CNC shop asked me to make a pair of wrenches that could be used with a torque wrench to properly tighten ER collets: an ER25 hex wrench and an ER20 notched (spanner) wrench. The shop's existing wrenches didn't have a torque-wrench-compatible drive, so collets were being snugged down by feel rather than to spec — not great when you want repeatable clamping force on tooling.

Steve sent over a DXF to start from. I brought it into Fusion and beefed up the geometry in a few spots that looked underbuilt, laser-cut a prototype from thin scrap to check the collet/tool engagement, and later 3D-printed a second prototype once I was more confident in the final dimensions.

Before committing to material, I had an agent run a strain analysis on the design at the target torque (roughly 77 ft-lb — I believe that's the ER20 spec, though I'm not entirely certain) to make sure the thinner sections wouldn't yield or flex enough to throw off the actual clamping torque. That analysis is what drove a couple of the geometry changes.

Final parts are 17-4 PH stainless, laser-cut to shape on my fiber laser.

They're surface-ground before and after heat treatment (mostly for appearance), and heat-treated to the H900 condition for strength.

I laser-engraved the tool type on each wrench with my smaller galvo fiber laser and filled the engraving with orange nail polish — orange being Nova Labs' color.

Here's a short video of the galvo laser engraving the ER20 wrench.

Wrenches are done and headed to Nova Labs.

Nova Labs Vent Grille

Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a grille for the outside of an HVAC vent in the robotics area at Nova Labs. The gear and bulb are the Nova Labs icon (you can see it in the sign that greets people at the entrance, too). I cut the grille on my fiber laser and then powder coated it. It was the most complicated project I had done on the laser up to that point, and I learned a lot doing it.

If you look very closely, you can see some misalignment in the holes. That was operator error, where I did not correctly recover my position after pausing the job.

The hole and the inside plate (August 2026)

One of the projects from a weekend in August 2026 was moving the big HVAC unit in the robotics area. Due to a miscommunication, it had been plunked down in the middle of a space we need. So I went in and helped knock a big dirty hole in the wall. Here's one of the other coaches on a ladder, drilling the hole that the vent goes through.

The prior hole just had a flexible tube jammed through it, but I figured I could do slightly better, so I designed an inside and an outside plate.

I fabbed up the inside plate on Sunday (plasma cutter FTW), then spot welded it together and powder coated it. It's a square steel plate with a rolled, slotted flange around a big round opening, powder coated white.

The outside was the next job: a laser cut grate with our logo on it, which I would also powder coat later in the week. That's the rest of this page.

Cutting it (August 2026)

The big round field is a honeycomb of small holes so the air can get through, with the gear and bulb left solid. That's a lot of holes to cut. Here's the laser head at work, close up and then from farther back.

The sheet on the bed of the laser with the pattern cut, and the bed afterward, with the little cut-out slugs scattered over the bed.

The pattern burned into the firebricks shows how serious a 1200W laser is: it did that even when out of focus by almost two feet!

And the finished cut, bare metal, before any coating went on.

Powder coating

I powder coated it in two stages. First a zinc primer, which should give it even more corrosion resistance than the topcoat alone.

Then the white topcoat.

And here it is finished, lying on the workbench.

Installed (September 2026)

It's on the outside wall, in an alley that few people go down, which is too bad. I still enjoy seeing it whenever I do.

It looks especially cool when it's backlit at night. I'll have to get a picture of that one of these days.

Curling Club Letters

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My brother asked for a set of letters to mark the lanes at the curling club he helps run. A through E and "eH", to mark the sheets of ice at a curling club. Yes, there really is a "sheet e", and both a "sheet a" and a "sheet eh". The last is pronounced in the Canadian fashion. I made them in July 2026.

Cutting the letters (July 2026)

This was basically the first "real" job on my new Gweike M3 Pro fiber laser. The kerf on it is so thin it's ridiculous. The outline of this first 'e' looks rough because the DXF I imported had a bunch of bumpiness in it, which I didn't realize until after the cut; I thought it was the laser, but it was actually faithfully reproducing flaws in the font. The other letters were much better, but even this isn't bad.

The pins

The letters stand off the wall on aluminum pins. I needed to make about 25 of these. Here's one, with a grooved and chamfered head at the top and a threaded end at the bottom. Making the other end is three operations (groove, chamfer, deburr) plus chucking and unchucking, and I was pretty happy with how fluid I got it. The threads came from a shop-made tailstock die holder, which lets me knock them out quickly on a bunch of pins.

The full set

Here's the full set of letters, with a small box of mounting hardware.

My brother tried them out on his wall.

Mounted (July 2026)

And here they are up at the curling club, one above each sheet's scoreboard. A closer look at the E, on its standoffs:

Moving and Setting Up the Gweike M3

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I bought a new laser, the Gweike M3. It came in a crate, and the only way to its final room in the basement was under a low deck, down a ramp, and through a wall.

June 1, 2026: the laser had arrived, and now the hard part. It's a 1200W CNC fiber laser cutter, engraver, welder and cleaner, plus a 80W CO2 laser, in one machine. The shipping weight is 1000 pounds (450 kg). My initial reaction: "OMG, it's huge."

It came off a box truck on the liftgate. The crate proclaims it "The World's First 6-in-1."

It spent its first night in the driveway under a tarp.

I spent two days preparing the path in. I modeled the area under the deck in CAD to make sure I could clear the low overhead, and it looked like I'd just barely make it. I built a ramp, since the stairs are one of the harder parts of getting stuff into the shop.

The boards have stringers on the underside, like a stair, so they don't slide.

The platform at the bottom, under the deck, covers the steps down to the shop door, so the laser can roll straight in.

June 5: uncrating complete. I realized that it has wheels. I'd planned to move it across the lawn on a dolly, but that wasn't necessary.

The laser on its pallet, on the driveway.

If you don't have a forklift but move heavy things, get a toe jack (the blue thing here). It's the secret weapon in machinery relocation, as it can sneak in under a gap as small as about half an inch. You can easily use a long crowbar to lift most things that far. It's slow, since you sometimes run out of travel, so you jack it up, rest the thing on blocks (which are called "cribbing"), and block up the jack.

As it turned out, I didn't even really need the toe jack: it's "light" enough that I could have just used the crowbar to get it high enough to slide a block in or out, which is what I wound up doing for the trip down.

Into the basement (June 6 to 13, 2026)

June 6: phase one complete. No casualties. Pushing it across plywood to the deck stairs. A brother and a friend are very helpful, especially as they are both younger than me.

A line across the lawn, with the laser at the far end.

The other end of that line: a puller strapped to a tree at the far side of the yard.

Taking it apart (June 9, 2026)

The machine wasn't going to fit through the door as delivered, so before it went inside I stripped off everything that added height or weight. The CO2 laser tube, which is glass, came out first.

The control panel's buttons, disconnected from behind.

The lid came off too, which meant unhooking its safety interlock switches.

June 9: inside! And one room away from where it needs to be. Better yet, the remainder of the work can be done in air conditioning. Note that we had to pull off the top and tip it on its side to get through the door.

June 11: in the final room.

Still not a ton of clearance, even after cutting into the wall.

The view from the other side.

The gantry sliding under the cut header, with about a finger's width to spare.

June 13: final orientation.

June 14: back together, with the lid and panels on, and the control console unpacked and waiting for its cables.

First cuts and ventilation

The sample cut board that comes with the machine. I believe it was cut on this very one.

I think I already figured out the first upgrade I want.

June 14: success! The kerf is so tight that the piece sits in the cutout on its own. It didn't fall out when the cutout was complete.

June 16: I tried a quarter-inch steel square, target size 25 mm. The measured dimension was 24.870 mm.

And the other direction, 24.941 mm. I didn't adjust for kerf, so the error is roughly the thickness of a piece of paper.

Ventilation. It's also a CO2 laser, which can cut wood and acrylic, much of which smokes a lot more, since the material is being burned and not just melted. It exits out the back, hence the long run, because that's where it needs to be in order not to get blocked by snow in the winter.

The exhaust opening in the wall.

My other lasers are on Fiber Laser Setup and CO2 Laser Setup.