I know what you’re going through very disorienting everything has changed so quickly and the consequences so high.
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Dkj, IMO you should send your kids to get the box of tiles. It’s not something you want to regret in the future. Or you can order things from HD for delivery too.
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I’ve made a couple of HD orders to be shipped to my home since March. The orders took a long time (several weeks for the last item in the order to arrive)…and it was especially frustrating since the items I wanted were in stock locally. Then HD started curbside pickup for online orders. I just order online from my local store, pull into the pickup area, open the back of the car and everything is loaded inside. No contact and relatively fast. It usually takes 24 to 36 hours for the order to be ready.
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Alright! The kids have a couple of things they want to go look at HD today or tomorrow and can pick up what I need while they are there. It’s all in stock at the local HD. Thanks, guys!
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You know the reasoning behind this is a very thoughtful and well planned series of how to videos and detailed setup walk throughs. Again
Well, the kids’ did good… brought me a $8 box of 4"x4" ceramic tiles from HD yesterday evening. Seems an incredible bargain to me… about 100 tiles (covers 12.5 sq.ft.) in the box.
This morning I removed four tiles and lightly spray-painted them with flat white paint…
After getting the photo ready, it took about an hour and twenty minutes to actually engrave the image. This was done with a 2.5W Eleksmaker diode laser on my miniFR machine, at 1200 mm/min and 85% power, using Lightburn, “Jarvis” dither, and 300 DPI…
Tile and image BEFORE removing the paint…
AFTER the paint is removed, the image is genuinely fused into the ceramic…
While not perfect, I’m quite pleased with my first full tile engraving. By far, the hardest part for me – knowing virtually nothing about photography – is processing the photo for brightness, contrast, gamma, “pop”/enhance, interval/DPI, etc… and generally getting it ready to be lasered. Lightburn has the tools to do most of this now… and is getting better every day. The rest of the Norton white ceramic tile process is a piece of cake.
– David
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I had the exact same one, the board fried and the laser quit, might want to replace the board now before it takes the laser with it. Or I could have had a bad one.
Cheers!
That is what I expected from you thank you kids 
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Another unrecognizable face… 1:20 to engrave, same laser and settings…
Image before paint removal…
Tools and materials for paint removal…
A capful of thinner, sit a minute, scrape vigorously with sharp metal scraper, a bit of a mess…
Wiped down with paper towels…
Washed/scrubbed and dried…
Original photo…
Fun stuff!
– David
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Do it yourself trivet set gues whats up for Christmas 
(hot pan thingy)
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Is that photo from the recent Picard series, or from 30 years ago. He never ages.
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Don’t know, Jeff. Just Googled “current patrick stewart portrait” and this was the first “large” photo to come up. Yeah, Patrick (he’s a good buddy of mine, I call him “Patrick”…) and I have the same problems with aging… 
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I showed my engravings to my daughter, of course… and she informed me that on Instagram(?), Patrick Stewart is a “regular”, sharing a Shakespearean “sonnet a day”. Okay… so what. I then saw this interview and somehow, someway, it all makes sense to me. I liked him immensely as Picard… I like him even more now.
– David
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The new Picard series is very good too. He seems like a fun guy to talk to. Very humble.
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Finally, the last of the my initial batch of four painted tiles…
I have an incredibly talented teenage grand-daughter who loves to sketch… and fills sketchbook after sketchbook with very detailed scenes, lots of activity, and recurring characters; i.e. there’s an almost “Where’s Waldo” quality to it. She imagines something in her head and it seems to magically flow out her fingertips. It’s really fascinating to watch and I’m very proud of her. This was a quick snapshot of just one page among many…
– David
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Those are great - especially the one of you grand daughter’s sketch. Now I “need” a frikin’ laser beam…
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Thanks for your concerns. I went ahead & ordered the EleksMaker Mana 3 board @dkj4linux mentioned & I had originally planned to buy. I will test the motors with the keyestudio board & see where it goes from there.
And a self-portrait…
Here it is being lasered… with “Raiders of the Lost Ark” on TV in the background…
– David
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