The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Category: laser-engraving

  • Laser Engraved Amateur Radio License

    It’s it silly how many times the government issues a license or “important” document, one which you’re supposed to carry with you, and it’s just a piece of paper?

    That’s how these ham radio licenses are. Print-at-home, cut-and-fold, watch die in your wallet.

    I figured, hey, I have a laser engraver. Why not have a little fun with it and make something a little more robust. A quick search on Amazon netted me an inexpensive set of card-sized anodized aluminum cards. A little time in Lighburn later, I had my double-sided, engraved metal ham radio license.

    This is actually my second copy, which I made after upgrading to a General license and changing my callsign.

    Yeah, dorky thing to do. But it looks great!

  • Pencil Case

    Having gotten into ham radio, I’ve been assembling a small, portable kit of essentials for getting on the air and making contacts. Because I have a hard time hearing and recalling callsigns, I write down their fragments as I hear them if I am not by a computer for immediate logging. So I need to have pens and pencils at hand.

    Enter, my new cherry pencil case.

    I then used my laser engraver to put my brand new callsign on it. Well, that was the plan anyway. I ran into the all-too-common problem of the Laserpecker LX1 freezing mid-engraving and had a LOT of trouble trying to get it to restart exactly where it left off. That was further complicated because the rotary was involved.

    The result is that it looks great from a distance, but up close just makes me cringe. Oh well, it’s mine and will still hold a few pens and pencils just fine. It was a great proof of concept and was fun to mix a few hobbies.