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Valentine's Day Tic Tac Toe with a Laser Cutter

This cute laser-cut Valentine's Day tic tac toe game proves that love always wins! Cut both the wood frame and acrylic pieces using your laser cutter.
Keyword: Acrylic, Glowforge, Laser, Wood, xTool
Author: Cori George

Equipment

  • Laser Cutter xTool, Glowforge, or Other

Ingredients

  • 1 Sheet of laser-ready wood maple plywood was used for this project
  • 1 Sheet of dark pink acrylic
  • 1 Sheet of light pink acrylic
  • Craft glue
  • 3M Adhesive
  • Vday Tic Tac Toe File

Instructions

  • Cutting Your Project
    These instructions are for the xTool M1 laser and xTool Creative Space, but again you can use whatever software and laser you have.
    Start by uploading the tic tac toe file to the cutting software. You'll need to split this file into three cuts—the wood, the dark pink acrylic and the light pink acrylic.
    Start with the dark pink acrylic hearts. Change your settings to cut acrylic. For the xTool M1, chose User-Defined Parameters and then choose 100/3/4 as the power/speed/pass for the dark acrylic. Again, yours may be different than this, so make sure to test all of the settings for each material.
  • Place your acrylic in the bed of your laser. For the xTool, found that it is not necessary to mask the material, but this particular material comes pre-masked so it was left as is. Cut your project using your laser cutter. Remember not to leave your laser unattended when it's cutting.
    Then repeat for your light pink acrylic. 100/2/5 was chosen for the settings for the light pink.
  • Then prepare the wood piece in the software. You'll need to change the text to engraving and the frame to cut. Note there are TWO frame pieces but they may import on top of each other. Just drag the pieces apart. Set the frame pieces to cut and change the settings. For Walnut, use 100/4/1.
  • Set the words to engrave and change the settings, if desired. 70/175/1 was used for the engraving settings.
  • Then click Process to cut and engrave your project.
    Remove any masking from your project. Love using a plastic razor blade for this—so much better than trying to use your fingernails!
  • Assembling Your Project
    Assembling the project is easy! Just use a bit of craft glue on the back of the frame piece to glue it to the backing piece.
  • Set a bunch of heavy books or other heavy object on top while the glue sets to make sure it adheres properly.
  • Then get ready to play a game of tic tac toe with your kids, your significant other, a friend, or other loved one! If you liked this Valentine's Day laser craft, also check out these heart earrings, made with the same dark pink acrylic!

Notes

Cutting acrylic can be difficult with lower-powered diode lasers, like the xTool laser. You will want to do cut some test circles to make sure your laser can cut your particular acrylic before you begin this project.
You can also cut the entire project out of wood and paint the hearts, if you'd like.