Lampshades are something of a recurring theme — and the laser cutter feeds right into that. The cage lamp shade assembled from laser-cut MDF slats is a more involved build, detailed enough to deserve its own project page at some point. The little robot/monster charms in both laser-cut plywood and 3D-printed plastic are a nice side-by-side comparison of how the same design reads in completely different materials.

And then there's the matchstick. A single matchstick with "come on baby light my fire" engraved along its length — a quick test of how much detail the machine can actually pull off. The answer: a lot. Once you have a laser cutter up and running, you start engraving everything just to find out what it can do.