{"id":357,"date":"2021-02-14T19:07:04","date_gmt":"2021-02-14T19:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/?p=357"},"modified":"2025-03-28T21:40:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T21:40:40","slug":"my-dark-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/2021\/02\/my-dark-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"My Dark Heart."},"content":{"rendered":"
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A lifetime ago, I last saw the girl who first <\/em>broke my heart on valentines day. She gave me a packet of sweet watches – a bit of a jab about timekeeping. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I was smarting from my second broken heart, I had me a 3D printer and the unfinished first project that I was never happy with was My Dark Heart<\/strong>; a black anatomical heart. It was going to be a necklace, it was going to be a box, it was going to be lifesize with a watch set into it so it ticked relentlessly until it finally gave out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Time passed and the smarting went away. I never resolved My Dark Heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fast forward, 2021. Valentine’s day; a day with Bertha (my laser cutter). The inspiration for My Dark Heart was Leonardo DaVinci drawings, and it has never gone away, so after my card issues<\/a>, I’m trying wood…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first burn came out way too dark and reminded me of My Dark Heart. This is an unprocessed image (I worked on it a lot to get it ready, but didn’t change the colours). [1000 speed, 50% laser.]



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So began an afternoon of tests… These are all about 55mm high.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Starting at the bottom left and working across and up:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unprocessed image
[2500, 50%]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lightburn traced image to paths.
[2500s, 50%, 5 passes by mistake!!!]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lightburn traced image to paths.
[2500s, 50%, 1 pass!]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modified image:
PS: Black and White (yellow filter), brightness +77, contrast -50
[2500s, 50%]
Love it, want it a bit darker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modified image – darker perfect.
[2500s, 60% laser]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these are on a peice of MDF.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So onward to putting it onto a peice of 2mm ply and cutting it out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love this. I was hoping that I would have a product I could sell by the end of the day, but there is a lot to decide with loads of variables, so it’s not there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it’s looking lovely and it’s working. My first wood cut!!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Dark Heart<\/strong> is not all that dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My Dark Heart in now in my Etsy shop.<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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A lifetime ago, I last saw the girl who first broke my heart on valentines day. She gave me a packet of sweet watches – a bit of a jab about timekeeping. By the time I was smarting from my second broken heart, I had me a 3D printer and the unfinished first project that I was never happy with… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-laser-capers","xfolkentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46630,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions\/46630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fluster.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}