Theo Sodani CV

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Baseball lineup board (glowforge)

My youth travel team had our first baseball game of the season last night and it was the perfect opportunity to put the Glowforge to use.

The problem: like many coaches I have a magnet board that we hang up on a fence. It shows the lineup for our team and which position the players will be playing that inning. It’s great - except for the fact that the magnets get lost or fall off in my backpack, the papers with the names fall out, and it can cause more problems than it solves! (like searching in the dirt mid-game for a lost magnet)



Yesterday I woke up and had an idea to solve the problem. Within two hours, I had a prototype built and ready for the game, using draftboard and baltic birch. At last night’s game, it held up perfectly! No lost pieces, no headaches! The simple locking mechanism kept every piece in place even when the kids bumped into the board.

I love my !

version 2 of the lineup board is already in the works - I may try a clear acrylic board, and use block print on the names so the kids can read it from farther away.

Baseball Mitt (glowforge)

Coach Rey gave me the idea to see if the Glowforge can engrave a baseball mitt. It was a real pain to get it flat - which may be mostly because I decided to try a catcher's mitt first.

Used the leather proofgrade settings, set the height of the object by seeing how much higher it was than the tray, and it worked perfectly!

The engraving is really clean and not too deep.

Iris Box draft (glowforge)

First attempt at an Iris Box, made with 3mm baltic birch. It's a lot larger than I was anticipating! I used soap on the screws and in the grooves so it could open easily. It also falls apart too easily if you flip it upside down - I think I can make the screw holes smaller to prevent that.

Instructions came from an Instructables project.

D&D Character Sheet Clipboard (glowforge)

T made this for his friend's 14th birthday. It's sized to hold a 8.5"x11" sheet of paper in the middle, the character sheet his friend uses for their Dungeons & Dragons campaign. The engraving is his friend's character.

This was our first attempt at graphic engraving at this detail and it worked out pretty well (after a few false starts). The trick was to make the graphic light enough so it didn't engrave too deeply into the wood.

Switch holder (glowforge)

This is the kind of everyday thing we use our Glowforge for. L's gecko has two lights on top of his cage, one for light, one for warmth. The lights we purchased have the most annoying cords with the switches at the least convenient spot on those cords.

L has to deal with it daily, so he wanted to make something that would help him keep those switches accessible. 10 minutes of design, 2 minutes of cutting and we have a solution:



It has held the cords/switches in place for 2+ weeks without fail and L's gets to reap the benefits of something he made every day.

Our board game - Nagasaki Plaza (glowforge)

The boys and I have been working on a board game for years. We have tested and honed it, improved every part of it many times over, but I think it will always be a work in progress. One of the reasons I was excited for the Glowforge was that we could fabricate components whenever we wanted.

This game is loosely based on 80s-90s action movies like Speed, Die Hard and Air Force One. I wanted the game to have an office tower (the original name was Tower Seven) and I went through many versions with cardboard and foam board. With the Glowforge, I was finally able to make the tower the game deserved, and that would keep the cards and components organized: