Niche Content for Very Specific People

This is like a money spread for mentally unwell engineers

In six simple steps!

Weeks ago, while I was doing God Knows What, I had what I can only be described as a vision. So strong, I RUSHED to my notes app:

"keep honking i'm mentally chamfering solids in fusion 360 (and then it's like the fusion colors and the chamfer tool icon and the corner of a cube lol)."

And then I forgot about it.

Then I remembered it while waiting for laundry to dry, and now I have a funny magnet that I put next to my desk. So, here's how you too can make your own bumper magnets:

1. be granted a vision

It took me about 10 minutes to think about what I wanted it to look like after remembering it existed. The hardest part was finding the right version of the Fusion logo, to be honest. Sketched it out, posted it to tumblr, got confused when it got a more interaction than I expected, then realized that I had been haikubotted.*

*Haiku-bot exists on a bunch of platforms, but tumblr has a pretty prolific bot.

Side note: here's some of my favorite tags people added when they reblogged this post

2. make a design

Okay, I finally sat down and made the thing. At Scratchpad no less! I am most comfortable in Illustrator, so I looked at a few fonts to get an idea of style, then downloaded the Fusion logo because remaking logos is for chumps. (I am chumps. Most of the time, anyway. But I wanted to cheat.)

Did you know there's no standardized sizing for bumper stickers? Yeah me neither. So I kinda just guessed. Took me two tries to get the sizing right, but printing on paper at scale is YOUR BEST FRIEND!!! Do not ever disrespect printing on paper at scale! That shit will save your life!

Peep the reg marks, we mean BUSINESS round these parts

3. get supplies

Hello? Yes, McMaster-Carr? I'd like one sheet of your finest Blank Sign, Magnetic Back, Vinyl, 24-3/8" High. Thank you.

4. printing

UV Printing! Which I will not explain in detail because this will quickly become 4,000 words, but the TL;DR is thus: CMYK resin gets laid down onto a surface in a veeeeeery specific dot pattern, then cured by a UV light. This happens a few times over and over in order to create an image that covers the whole surface. In reality, all you have to do is hit print on a PDF that you have set up for best sheet yield.

The desk of a madman - this is where I keep my Freakishly Long Allen Keys

5. cutting

Magnet sheet is fantastic if you've never worked with it. The magnet is usually pliable/soft enough that you can slice through it easily, but once it's scored, you can just snap it over a table corner and it'll break clean at the score line.

Yes, we could do something complicated like set up a jig to run a dragknife along a line that follows a fiducial for ultimate precision, or something similarly convoluted - or you could buy an Olfa 300 hobby knife for $10 and git gud using a straight edge.

6. slapping it up

"Why not make a true bumper sticker?" Because I didn't want to print on vinyl, next question.

"No, really." Because I don't own a car.

"Damn, for real?" I grew up in New York. This is not a Q and A.

Anyway, it's a magnet! That means you can THROW IT AT A SURFACE and it will stick to it. I find this very satisfying. It can still go on your car! But also on your fridge, or tool cart, or any other ferrous surface.