Ideas for things to do to impress my boss

Im looking for things to do. My boss isn’t really happy with the things I have been doing so I am looking for things to do, What would be some simple cool things to do. I have the 883 pro. so I’m looking for samples or pics of things you have done that won’t take hour to do but simple things that would be cool to show my boss.

A set of calipers?

https://www.shapeoko.com/projects/project.php?id=154

Source at: https://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/File:Tool_calipers_locking.svg

(optional improvement, set up the fixture so that one secures the hardware in place and machines it along w/ the calipers)

I’ll definitely try this out thank you

Stop posting on forums during work hours might impress him!
All kidding a side, what business are you and your boss in? Knowing that would help wit suggestions. Is it your bosses Nomad, did he buy it for something specific that just isn’t turning out right?

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haha good one. yeah I post on here because he wants to see something different then what I already have done we are an environmental design company but were wanting to start doing stamps an such or notebook engraved things so we can have all our employees names and such on stuff that could be engraved

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Explaining what you have been doing may help with ideas you are looking for.

Okay for the employee names, my inclination would be to set up a TeX file which would input a CSV (listing all the employees in question — can you get such a file from HR, say one used to create business cards?) and then typeset say a personalized notebook cover. Burst the PDF into individual pages using pdftk, then use a tool to convert from PDF to SVG (or use a tool which will directly open the SVG). For bonus points you could do this in METAPOST which will directly create SVGs.

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my inclination would be to set up a TeX file which would input a CSV…

…or for a less technical rabbit-hole, since you don’t sound like a programmer, you can lay the text out in illustrator with your favorite fonts, outline the text, and export to DXF for import to Fusion360 for engraving… using Fusion is cheap/free depending on your circumstances, and you can find a lot of tutorials on youtube for how to do it.

You can pick up some 60° & 90° v-engravers from bitsbits.com fairly cheaply, and they’ll cut nicely in plastics, aluminum, wood, and brass. Many people have posted about feeds/speeds for them around here as well.

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For the sake of @WillAdams I have to chime in. It is a great idea for repetitive stuff! Here is a little example of some python code.

# Import the class
# Make sure it is installed in virtualenv or in global
# pip install svgwrite
import svgwrite

# Create the file
doc = svgwrite.Drawing(filename = "test.svg",
                            size = ("800px", "600px"))

# Add a rectangle
doc.add(doc.rect(insert = (0, 0),
			   size = ("200px", "100px"),
			   stroke_width = "1",
			   stroke = "black",
			   fill = "rgb(26, 165, 38)"))

# Add some text next to rectangle
doc.add(doc.text("Shapeoko Rocks",
                               insert = (210, 110)))
# Save the doc
doc.save()

It will generate a .svg file.

Which looks pretty basic. If you have some time read the docs and just play around with it.

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