With eighty weeks worth of projects behind us, it’s clear that a laser platform is a flexible tool with a ridiculous variety of uses. Sometimes, between the creative experiments and the meatier, more complicated solutions to problems, you just need a piece of wood cut. Well, why bother pulling out a saw and doing a bunch of measurement by hand when you can input exact measurements in a vector editing program and have the laser do the dirty work? It almost defeats the point of “measure twice, cut once.” Not quite “defeats”, because even in the digital world it’s always worthwhile to double check your design, but almost!

The gap, center top, lets plenty of precious conditioned air leak out of the building.

Jennifer has a vent in the break room at work that is very rarely used anymore, and after the room was recently repainted, the chunk of drywall that unceremoniously plugged the vestigial gap wasn’t good enough anymore. She wanted a nice piece of solid wood that would fit the gap exactly and prevent the building’s controlled atmosphere from leaking through the metal gate.

The piece was laid out as a 10.25″ square with very slightly rounded corners—measured to fit into the vent hole exactly. While the vent isn’t meant to be used anymore, there is still a small light switch that can turn on the fan inside, so I also opted to engrave a notice that it shouldn’t be turned on without first removing the wooden plank. It was a simple one-and-done, and the laser turned out a perfectly square piece of atmosphere saving wood in less than ten minutes.

The final vent cover. How simple can you get?

We often do fairly complicated projects here on 52lasers, but we’ve had our fair share of easier pieces, too. This was, by far, the quickest problem solver we’ve created so far, though. It came at a good time, because we’re still catching up on things after vacation! Here’s to some meatier projects now that we’re back. Full steam ahead. 🙂