Stencil Postcard 2: the Slider

by fungus amungus

6.4K1910

Intro: Stencil Postcard 2: the Slider

I've been having fun playing with the laser cutter and after making one stencil postcard and mailing it cross country I figured that I'd need to make another. Only this time it was going to be made out of three pieces of acrylic and have a sliding internal piece that would highlight one address at a time. The pictures here don't quite do it justice, but you can see what it looks like in its two states.

Hit the next step to see what's going on.

Related project: Stencil Postcard

STEP 1: The Pieces

The three main pieces are cut out of white acrylic with a sub-piece cut out of black acrylic. Going from left to right these are:

Piece 1: Top layer with both addresses completely cut out with a laser cutter.
Piece 2: Middle layer with large hole in the middle that is big enough to encompass both addresses.
Sub-piece: Rectangular pece of black acrylic that is slightly narrower than the gap and roughly half as tall
Piece 3: Plain backing layer.

All three main layers had screw holes cut out in the corners. I could've glued them together, but the screws allow the finished piece to sit on a table without the acrylic getting scratched.

STEP 2: Screw It

Screws, washers, nuts, and a hacksaw. Good times.

STEP 3: Ready to Be Sent

Play around with the finished piece, take loads of photos, and go to the post office to mail it off. When they ask you if you want to put it into a bag or a box just say "no" about four or five times until they give in.

Here's a blurry movie of the final piece in action. Sorry for the Drunk-o-Vision, but I didn't want the addresses to show. This at least gives an idea of what's going on.


STEP 4: Success!

it took four days, but the card made it all the way to Brooklyn. My friend Matt took it apart to see if there was a message inside (there wasn't), but was able to put it all back together. Maybe one of these days I'll see it again. It's fun to send off a final project knowing that that's probably the last time I'll ever see it. Now all that's left are the memories, an instructable, and a blurry video.

10 Comments

jundulate 17 years ago

Cool! I work at a sign shop and we make lots of corporate signs with sliders. What settings did you use on the laser engraver for cutting different thickness' of acrylics?

binnie 17 years ago

he doesnt want the adresses to be seen. if i was any better with photshop i swear i could get them out.

JakeTobak 17 years ago

Nice, but what happened to your video? It looks like the camera was shaking or something.

fungus amungus 17 years ago

I applied a filter in After Effects a couple of times. I think it's called Displace or something. The effect is that it repeats the image on top of the video. Doing that twice gives a triple-vision look to it.

LasVegas 17 years ago

It also makes it impossible to read the addresses. Nice trick! I do pity your postman though… I can just imagine the discussions around the water cooler at your local PO!

fungus amungus 17 years ago

The people at the post office usually love it. The guy delivering it may have a different opinion, however.

trebuchet03 17 years ago

Wait, so does that mean this is the last goofy thing to go through the mail?

fungus amungus 17 years ago

Whoops. Didn't edit that last page correctly. Supposed to be the last time I see the piece. Not the last time I did this. There are currently four pieces in the mail right now. Two more IKEA frames and two new pieces. Then there are at least four more ideas in the works, including the one mentioned on the MAKE blog.

zachninme 17 years ago

Very cool. If you were the secret agent type, you could make a small hollow black box to use as the slider... no one would know...