In Cardiff School of Art and Design we have already be using several laser cutters. My first laser cutting experience was with FB5000 laser cutter

It is using the Cutting Composer Software from Aps-Ethos.

However in the Fab Lab we will be having the Helix Epilog 60w that has got an A2 size cutting bed.

For this reason my design will be cut there.
I decided to do something challenging and it took a long time to design. My design is a "towel hanger" for the bathroom. It consists of 4 pieces, 2 of which are the parts that hang onto the glass shower door and the other too are braces to hold the object together.

Being in a humid/wet environment acrylic was the best choice. The two hanger pieces are designed for a 5mm acrylic whereas the braces/ decorative pieces are of 3mm. The most tricky part was the dimension of the notches in order to get a good fit. After a few tests the successful result came with the female part [rectanglular hole] being .08mm narrower than the acrylic male part.

Also the laser was set to cut the rectangle from the insude line towards the outside, instead of cutting on the line.

We now know how to laser cut using the colour coding. it is very handy.

How does it look?

Does it work?

Works fine!

The drawing can be found here.