Staff Spotlight 1
Who are you and what do you do at LightBurn?
I'm Jackie Gerstein. I've been writing documentation and other content to help our users learn to use LightBurn since 2022. Before that, I was a high school technology teacher for 15 years. I taught CAD, digital fabrication, robotics, programming, woodshop, and other technology courses, and mentored FIRST Robotics Competition teams, in addition to creating and running my school's makerspace.
How did you end up at LightBurn?
I'd been teaching digital fabrication classes for years before I started at LightBurn. I'd been using a laser cutter in my classroom since 2015, and a CNC router since 2016. Trying to train an entire classroom of teenagers to use these tools and get everybody through a basic project on each machine was an interesting challenge, but creating templates for students to use and standardizing as much as possible helped a lot. LightBurn's Template Files would have been nice to have back then!
I was looking for jobs where I could still use some of those educational and technology skills when I met somebody working for LightBurn volunteering at a robotics event and eventually started discussing documentation and how to improve remote learning.
There may also have been a 2 AM email manifesto on how to improve the documentation involved.
What got you into making? What kinds of projects have you done?
My earliest start was through sewing and other crafting. My mom was a quilter and a computer nerd, and she introduced me to both sewing and computers when I was still very young.
I started with sewing, paper crafting, and helping my mom upgrade and fix computers, even if at the start my 'help' was handing her screwdrivers and holding a flashlight. My first CAD experiences were in 1991, using a program called Electric Quilt to design my own quilt blocks.
My interests have shifted around over the years, but a few of the things that really stand out and which I always seem to find my way back to are robotics (especially combat robotics), drawing, sewing, Power Racing, and all the things that make them possible.
Some of my earliest memories around making involve sewing and going with my mom to meetups for online quilting and other crafting communities. Even though I was a bit young to participate much, I'm glad to have been exposed to the idea of these communities so early.
How long have you been making things? What's the first thing you remember making?
I genuinely don't remember a time when I wasn't making things. I did a lot of crafting and learned to sew before I started kindergarten, using an old treadle sewing machine that had been electrified and ran very slowly.
The first thing that really sticks out as a project of my own that didn't have directions or adult involvement actually got me in a bit of trouble. Home Alone had just come out, and my cousin and I were up late in our grandparents' house and started wondering what would happen if someone broke into the house. Naturally, our solution was to try to make traps and weapons to defend the house with. Certainly not my most impressive or practical project (to be fair, we were only 6), but it was certainly fun.
What's your favorite tool that isn't a laser, 3D printer, or CNC router? Or the one you think might surprise people?
Tired of rulers slipping around?
A little trick that might be useful to you if you do have a ruler that slips around easily when you try to use it as a straight-edge: Cut out some small pieces of a fine grit sandpaper and stick them to the bottom of the ruler with double-stick tape. It'll keep the ruler from sliding as easily, but isn't rough enough to damage most surfaces.
A quilting ruler. It doesn't replace a pair of calipers and isn't my only ruler, but it's such a great tool that I think most people who don't sew just don't know about. It's a clear, rectangular acrylic ruler marked in a grid instead of just a straight line, usually with some angles and arcs marked as well. Being able to quickly measure the width and height of an object, mark right angles, or cut a straight edge with a ruler makes projects so much faster and easier. As a bonus, the newer ones often have a non-slip texture on the bottom so it's easier to keep them from slipping around when you're cutting or marking lines.
Do you have any project you're known for? What have you made that you think deserves a bit more recognition than it got? What are some of the projects you've done that really excited you and why?
I think that being on TV counts here, even if I'm not particularly well known for it - I've been on BattleBots with HiJinx!
If I had to pick a project that I'd love to see get out there a little more, it would be the Big Orange Truck I made for the Power Racing Series. This is a race series that started out with a bunch of adults (chronologically, at least) racing Power Wheels cars around a parking lot in Chicago, and still doesn't take itself too seriously. Each kart needs to be based on a children's ride on toy, or at least look like something that could have been one. Since a 1980s Toyota Hilux didn't seem to exist in this format (I can't imagine why), I opened up my CAD software and got to work. I modeled up something that looked reasonably similar, carved it out of pink insulation foam on my CNC router, reinforced the surface with fiberglass, and painted it orange to match the Tacoma we'd be driving it to races in.
What are some of your favorite skills/techniques that you've picked up along the way?
Not a specific technique, but definitely a skill - I can pick up new skills quickly. I'll never be the world expert at any one thing, but I can do a lot of things well enough to get by, and those varied skills reinforce each other to be useful at the weirdest times.
What's your favorite project that went horribly wrong?
I mentioned the Power Racing Series earlier - my wife taught me to weld while we were working on a build together. I am, at best, a pretty mediocre welder (although I've gotten pretty good with an angle grinder because of that, which was useful at BattleBots). Ultimately, only one of my welds actually made it onto the finished kart. I was pretty proud that one of my welds was good enough to make it into the finished kart.
I don't have any pictures of the weld that tried to kill me, but I learned a lot and made much better welds here.
Turns out it wasn't quite good enough, as I discovered coming around a curve, going full speed downhill towards a wall, when the steering column came loose in my hands. Luckily, the column was still connected through a universal joint, even if it wasn't anchored to anything, and I managed to steer enough to avoid smashing face-first into the wall.
Since then, I try to make sure my testing matches the intended environment. If I want a kart to survive steering as I'm bouncing around on a rough course, I need to test it in similar situations. If a combat robot can't survive falling to the floor or being driven by a 5 year old, it's probably not going to hold up well in an actual fight.
Are you involved in any makerspaces or other similar groups?
Yes! I joined FUBAR Labs in NJ back in 2010, and it absolutely changed my life to have a community of makers to share projects with and generally get excited about learning and doing new things.
Through FUBAR, I got involved with the Power Racing Series, and helped start GSCRL, a combat robotics league in NJ.
Last fall, I moved to Portugal, and before I'd even finished moving in, I'd started getting involved with LCD Porto.
If you haven't already been to a makerspace or something similar, I'd strongly encourage checking to see if there's one near you. Even if you don't need the tools they might have, having community that shares your interests, or at least gets excited about them with you, is so important.
What communities do you usually hang out in? How did you find them?
On the maker side, currently mostly LCD, Liga Rec, and GSCRL. I've also been starting to get involved with the 3D printing community again. Beyond that, I've got some local groups and general social groups.
What's a LightBurn/MillMage tip you'd like to share? Do you have any surprising ways you use it?
I think the Threshold image mode is a really useful option that a lot of people miss. I see a lot of people tracing black and white images just to engrave them, when doing a Threshold image engraving would preserve more detail and be easier. The screenshot here shows an example of how we used Threshold to engrave the Porto Maker Faire logo on a keychain. This one required some adjustments to the Threshold settings because of low contrast, but it worked well and gave us more detail than tracing would have.
I use LightBurn a lot for laying out parts even if I won't be using LightBurn or MillMage to cut them, and for cleaning up and fixing vector files.
What's next for you? What will you be focusing on in the next few months?
I'm going to be working on some more upgrades to my current combat robot, Wobbegong, and getting ready for the next event in November. I've got some workshops coming up at my local makerspace, and I want to play around with 3D engravings on both my router and my new galvo laser. I'm also working with a few other people at my makerspace to help a local theater group automate treadmills to use as part of a set.
What's your moon-shot project? If you had the time to devote to it and someone else covered the budget, what would you create?
Do I really have to pick just one?
On a personal level, I'd like to create really nice custom furniture perfectly suited to my home and the things I want to store. And if we're really ignoring cost and time - a heavyweight combat robot of my own. They're fun, but expensive and time-consuming.
On a broader level, I'd want to really put a lot of time into building up stronger outreach, networking, and resources for combat robotics and makerspaces. I'd love to be able to host workshops and build sessions with materials provided, and helping other people with their ideas contributes to my own projects as well.
Where can people find you
For now, the best place to find me is the LightBurn Forum. If I go back to having more public social media or maintaining my website again, I'll update here.
What do you wish I'd asked you so you could answer it?
Show me your pets, please.
I don't have any pets at the moment, but that doesn't mean I won't take this opportunity to pull out some old photos.
