We Deal In Laser, Friend

mdf wargaming terrain made with a laser cutter

I finally took my new laser cutter, that my wife recently got me, to good use. I started out testing the material settings for MDF and other “useful” things and ended up etching out family crest onto everything I got hold of. Then I decided that I made enough progress to go a step further and to cut my own wargaming terrain.

I’m currently painting up 3d printed miniatures for the A Fistful of Lead: Reloaded ruleset and a listing on etsy looked quite nice. I got a whole bunch of those yummy wild west buildings and spend a whole weekend cutting and assembling them

mdf wargaming buildings made with a laser cutter
First batch of the finished buildings for a wild west town.

I must really say that I’m quite pleased with how they turned out. At first I stood next to the cutter equipped like a fire fighter just in case something went up in flames because … reasons, and my personal self-assessment … the cutter came as a kit and I had to assemble everything from A as in pcbs to Z as in timing belt.

mdf wargaming buildings made with a laser cutter
First batch of the finished buildings for a wild west town.

Besides having nice wargaming terrain, popping the parts out of the MDF plate is quite satisfying. Just your fingers are smelling like a forest fire after a while.

Now that I know how those models are designed, I started designing my own using blender3d and a dedicated CAD and export plugin that even considers the laser thickness to make sure that the joints are fitting snug and cozy.

mdf laser cut ruler for the wargamging ruleset triumph!
Customized measurement tool for Triumph!

For Triumph!, another wargame that I frequently play, I did some bases for the 15mm miniatures but also a custom measurement tool that indicates the movement distances of each unit type..

If every there is a Triumph! player in need for this thingy, I prepared a download (right click save as) under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Have fun!