Designing Coasters On Demand

While functional to keep a bar or table dry, coasters normally aren’t that interesting in and of themselves. However, hacker Barton Dring decided to switch things up with a pair of machines that mark square and round coasters to his specifications!

The first of these devices, called “Coasty,” allows a square coaster to be fed in through a slot in the bottom, and marks, or even cuts, a new pattern into it using a laser. The second project takes the form of a polar plotter, rotating round coasters on a small platform, while a pen is pulled over the surface on an overhead arm.

Both are controlled by the Grbl Arduino machine control package, and can be seen in action in the videos below!