Week - 04           Computer controlled Cutting

 

Aim:

 

- Characterize your laser cutter, making test part(s) that vary cutting settings and dimensions

 

 

Goal:

 

-To create a palette of different materials that document/provide varying parameters for cutting and etching

 

The primary intent was to create a swatch that helps the user of the laser cutter to identify the power of a material for their purpose, be it etching of different styles or cutting of different depths. A catalog can be made that contains different materials and its parameters. The cutter used in this documentation is:

 

Brand: SIL

Model No: SIL-1290

Laser Type: Co2 DC glass laser tube

Laser power: 100 watt

Wavelength: 10.6 um

Supply voltage: AC 220 V + 10%

Re-positioning accuracy: 0.1 mm

Cutting speed: 0~30000 mm / min

Engraving speed: 0~64000 mm / min

Cooling method: Water cooled

Work environment: Temp: 0 c ~ 45 c. humidity: 5% ~ 95%

Acceleration speed: 1 G

Working area: 1200×900 mm

Graphics file support:  .PLT, .CDR, .AI, .DWG, .DXF, .DST, .BMP, .JPEG, .TIFF, .GIF, .PCX, etc.

 

So first we started off by designing a template that can be used to document the cutting process. Autocad was used for this process.

The idea was to obtain the optimum cutting and etching parameters for a particular material and thickness and then vary its speed and power to get varying results. For cutting, we decided to keep the power constant and vary speed and for etching vice versa as etching needs to be done as fast as possible. So it made sense to keep the speed at a higher level and vary the power. Each box will have different parameters.

 

Once the basic template was done it was imported into RD works. The difficulty we faced in RD works was to put everything in layers because each box has different properties. We took to C AutoCAD again to work on layers and then bring it back to RD works.

​The results were satisfactory for a test cut but then we understood the various key factors that we missed out while designing. What we learned: -In cutting the speed series were all assigned in such a way that it cut all the boxes -Etching resulted in charring as the power was too much -The speed of engraving was too fast and as a result, the letters seem wobbly -The template didn’t have space for material details. Keeping the lesson in mind the template was slightly modified to accommodate material details. .

A hole was punctured in the corner which then later can be used for cataloging. Once the template was done we went on to cut out first material, 5.0mm thick MDF.

The results were very satisfactory and the module explains the desired effect with the necessary parameters to achieve the same. Proceeding further to the next material, which was Balsa wood of 5.0mm thickness and we encountered some problems.

 

Apart from thickness, the basic property of the material change to a great extent.Even after our preliminary test, the resultant parameter lead to charring of the material.

This was partly due to the material not being even on the laser bed and also due to the assigned power and speed. In the following process, we rectified that.

 

Keeping all this in mind we cut two more materials an Acrylic board and a mount board.

Another issue with this process is it is time consuming as the base parameter for the material need to be obtained first and then that has to be varied to obtain the swatch. So far we have created swatches for 4 materials and will continue to add more materials and also same materials with varying thickness to this library

Few Other materials

 

Cardboard 1.5mm

Cardboard 2.0mm

Cardboard 4.14 mm