Hackaday: Parchment might be a thing of the past, but for those of us who still use paper an embossed seal can give everything from your official documents to your love letters a bold new feeling of authenticity. As far as getting your own seals made, plenty of folks will settle for having a 3rd party make them a seal, but not us. [Jason] shows us just how simple it is to raster our own seals with a laser cutter.
4 comments:
This is so cool. People are constantly finding new uses for laser cutters and it makes me really happy. You might think that everything’s pretty much been figured out for laser cutting and now it’s just iteration after iteration, which can be cool, but there is nothing inherently new. But here we are; someone figured out hot to precisely engrave a seal into the Delrin sealing material. I know the article says that it is fairly standard to engrave embossers like this, but I, like the authors of the article, also didn’t realize how easy it could be with any laser cutter that can handle laser engraving. I would really like to try to make an embosser, I think it would be really fun to have around and just emboss random pieces of paper. I wonder if it actually is cheaper to make your own embosser than to just buy one. As with most crafts like this, it probably is cheaper to buy. But you loose the fun and satisfaction of figuring it out yourself.
Now that’s a new use of laser cutting technology. I at first thought this was going to be something similar to what Frank did in our laser cutter. He engraved rubber to make a stamp. It worked but smelled up the whole building for a little. So I thought, I’ve seen this, it’s a good use. BUT THEN I saw this article and video is about stamps to emboss paper and I got even more excited. Do I have a need for this in my life? Probably not unless I get into the counterfeit business, but this is a cool thing to be aware of. Perhaps this would be good for props or marking documents, but that might be overkill. The software he is using also looks pretty useful for laser cutting and I would be curious to know more about it. With all the CNC type tooling that is being created there is a lot of room for innovation in terms of tool design, but I think there is just as much room for innovation in respect to different uses for the tools we already have.
I think its so funny that this article is on this news page since it doesn't really have anything to do with theatre or the entertainment business. I think that is why it perfectly represents what theatre is and how it brings together skills from all fields to create a story. Who would think that embossing paper had anything to do with theatre but it could be used for props, or for approval stamps, etc. Honestly, theatre is so weird, I cannot think of any single skill that would absolutely never be used. I also find stationary really fun. Old ways to treat paper and pens automatically give a classic feel to anything and I would love to have my own paper seal. Though this is not necessary, laser cutters exist all over this campus so its not that much more effort to make this. Which, I think, also says something about the usefulness of laser cutting.
Being able to use a laser to emboss a seal is quite refreshing and makes me wonder when and what the laser industry will come up with next. I am impressed with the speed at which it can be done form both the finding of the image to the actual embossing of the seal. This does, however, raise several concerns in my mind. First off the fact that this removes any credibility of a seal pressed onto things. If someone has the image, they don't need an official seal press in order to make it so. in this day and age, it only makes faking something for official use that much too easy. Second thought is that is it relay faster than using a seal press. Often he thought is newer is better but for this, I don't know. It might be if one is doing something special or has a million of them to do, but if this is to replace a press truly then it would have to replace the ones sitting on the desk at the DMV.
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