Team tokens .. Questions.

[preprius]

I am thinking of making about (40)  -1 inch inlay tokens.  1/2inch thick each. This a prototype.

It is an inlay of aspen in purple heart. both half inch thick.

The swiggles are a waveform the whole team has to know. The various shapes curves all have meaning. 

So I have 4 questions...

1) should I just make things thinner and skip the inlay?  Just have someone else laser the wafeform.

2) Since I dont have laser what is best method of making qty 40?

3) Are team tokens worth the effort?

4) It seems a bit of waste for the round white Aspen not being used. The purple waveform is too loose for fiting in the Aspen.  Is there a better method?

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by preprius

[jollyred]

If you have a router or a rotary tool with a base, that could be routed into the disc, then filled with colored epoxy or self-hardening clay.  Just make a template to do the routing, since you have 40 of them to do.  To do the routing safely, you could lay out the discs on a board, then rout them all together.  After the filling hardens, sand everything flat and cut out the individual discs.  

Tom

[preprius]

1 hour ago, jollyred said:

If you have a router or a rotary tool with a base, that could be routed into the disc, then filled with colored epoxy or self-hardening clay.  Just make a template to do the routing, since you have 40 of them to do.  To do the routing safely, you could lay out the discs on a board, then rout them all together.  After the filling hardens, sand everything flat and cut out the individual discs.  

Tom

Very nice idea.  Skip the scrollsaw inlay.   

There is 1 draw back but if I route all the way thru, then that isssue is resolved.   

There are 2 teams, the 2nd team uses the waveform upside down.

Thank you. . .

[preprius]

I took my time at these 27 tokens. I cut out 3 per day.  2 are on the drying rack. 

After struggling with getting the correct blade and table angle. The inlay technique came out very good.  

Use a #1 blade for tight turns , 0.8 deg cut angle.  

I am delivering the team tokens tomorrow.  Sent out emails to each team member and all responded surprised and thankful. 

Me.

Mark Eason

 

[Scrappile]

Very nice job.  Inlay is fun and rewarding.  Did you say in another post, what the emblem is and I missed it?

[preprius]

The emblem is a signal in a flyback power supply.  The wall chargers for almost any rechargeable device use some form of flyback circuits. The emblem is pretty simplified version.  The whole team has is trained to analyze this signal and report if something is wrong,  and make improvements.

Our team makes the controller chips that goes into wall chargers. 

We are always improving how much energy is being used when cell phone is not plugged in.   15 years ago a wall charger took about 0.1 watts when on the wall but not charging anything.   Multiply that by the number of wall chargers across the world and there is alot of wasted energy.  My house has about 15 of these wall chargers.  Power tooth brushes, cell phones, laptops, cameras, printers, bluetooth devices, etc.  Now this style of chip is also in microwaves, cable boxes, washer and dryer machines.   It provides a low power sleep mode for TVs. When you turn off your TV a small circuit is still on to listen to your remote. 

To each person this 0.1 watts is really low.  But greater than 30 billion world wide sucks alot of energy.   Now we are running standy power near 0.006 watts. Almost 500 times less.  

Sorry for the long answer.  I was in the training mode. 

When I interview a new people I put that chip on the table and tell them that is what we build.