First test of making GeoCoins with the laser cuter

I have been having a lot of fun searching for GeoCaches around Vancouver the past few weeks. In some of the GeoCaches that I have found, people have included GeoCoins.

A geocoin is a metal or wooden coin minted in similar fashion to a medallion, token coin, military challenge coin or wooden nickel, for use in geocaching. Many of them are made to be trackable on various websites to be able to show the movement around the world and visitors to be able to leave comments when they find the coin.

I really liked the GeoCoins and wanted to create a few my own to release in to the wild.  I created my own tracking system for the GeoCoins as the existing systems were too expensive for me.

I got some time on VHS’s Laser cuter tonight and was able to start making some test cuts of different GeoCoins.

None of the acrylic ones turned out very well. I just couldn’t read the QR codes on the back of the coins. They looked pretty but are not functional.

I switched over to wood to do some of the other testing. Mainly with printing dual sided objects on the laser cuter. The wooden GeoCoins (wooden nickel) turned out better then I expected and most of the QR codes were readable. I tested about 5 different combinations of speed and power and found one that I think will work.

I will be making a few more revisions over the next week. I hope to be able to find a design that I like, and make about ~25 coins before I head to Word Maker Faire in NY next week.

I planning on putting these newly designed GeoCoins in some of the Geo Caches in New York and hopefully someone will take the time to track the coins as they travel between the different Geo Caches.