Laser cutting
- Add link to the group assignment
- Screenshots and description of the process of making your press- t construction kit design. folders
- Mention the tools or commands you used for making the design.
- Explain the process of taking the design from your software to the laser cutter:
- Exporting your file. FabAcademy
- Setting parameters (power, speed, focus).
- Executing the G-code.
Click image to see the group assignment
For make my press fit I tried to used FreeCad but after a couple of headaches I give up and decided to back to CorelDraw to finish the design
Next I'll describe some of the tools and the process to make my table of three feet.
- The toolbar place vertically at the left of the screen is one of the most important to make your draws.
The first tool its called pick tool and the function is to select and modify objects.
- The Second tool its called Shape tool and you to modify curves
- Here we have the zoom the tool
.
- In this box we have different kind of tools but the most important its the bezier
.
- the tools for basic shapes are others that give you amazing results when you learn to combine with others.
- For make my table top i symply used the ellipse tool and holding down the CTRL key you can draw a circle.
- For make the T-bones I used a rectangle, give the desired size for assembly the foot.
- draw some circles and positioned the quadrants of the circles with the corners of the rectangle.
- selected the circles and the rectangle at this point you can see another toolbar that shows you different tools to make a kind of boolean cuts like, weld, combine, difference etc.
I prepared the top and made just one leg and duplicated the one I made to make the three that I need to create my table with three legs.
Here you can see the results of the design.
after finished I save the design in two formats DXF that is used in the CNC and PLT to use with laser cut because I wanted to make a prototype with MDF with 3mm of thickness.
Prototyping With the Laser Cut
This part its really easy just;
The Software used to this its called RdWorks and its proprietary of the laser cut.
- Import the file that you just previously saved in your folder.
- when you have it on screen select the layer you want to configure, in our laser cut we use it with some parameters by recommendation of the developers.
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- For cut we give a maximum value of 50% a minimum of 45 and speed of 12 for 3mm MDF
- the kerf for this laser cut its aprox 0.35 to have it in mind when you want to prototype with us.
- for this prototype i decided to make all the layers with cut parameters.
- when I was done simply install the material over the bed of the laser cut and make click in the bottom start in the left panel.
And this was the result
Preparing the Design to cut in the CNC Machine
For this part I used the Program ArtCAM this was the one that came with the laser cut and I don't really tried another software after learn how to use ArtCAM.
The Steps to prepare the document:
When you save the file in DXF format you need to give the perimeter with the size of the material you have available.
Open ArtCAM and open normally the DXF file.
Here the software shows you a screen with the size of the canvas and you can select the origin of the bed.
- When you Click OK ArtCAM will show another screen that ask you to center the design in the work area and go to re check the size of the bed, here you have another basic options has join the curves (better not to thrust to this tool at this point.
- When you Click OK you will see your design centered in the screen ready to be prepared to cut
As I left the vectors in just one layer I have to select the objects that want to affect, first selected the T-bones to give 12mm in depth;
Selected the objects and move to the toolpaths icon on the right panel, this open a bunch of tools next in the down panel that appears.
When you select the clearance toolpath this will pop up a new panel and here we go to configure all the options to generate the G-Code.
In the first part of the 2D Area clearance we just modify the depth you need for the cut in my case I applied 12mm.
Going down in the same window we have the option to select the tool or the bit to execute the cut.
selecting this you will have a new window with a catalogue of tools that came preconfigured with the program, but you can easily copy tools and create new ones with the parameters of the bits you found in the market.
Move to the one you will use for the clearance, in my case I selected the 1/4 bit.
When you select the tool you come back to the preview screen and here you need to modify the step over and the speed of cut, (some of this values are overwritten by the controller of the CNC machine).
Here I just modify the stepdown to 9mm to make two passes to complete every job.
you can modify the strategy for raster or offset depending of the cut or the finishing you need.
And the last step her is to select the thicknes of the material.
in the last box give a name to the path and make click in the calculate now bottom.
this is the process to make a clearance area.
Creating the path to cut
We need to select all the vectors that we know are corresponding to the cut process
Select again the toolpath icon and move to the panel that appears down in the same panel.
Now we go to use the icon for create profile toolpath.
after click in this icon we go to see another panel and here we go to modify all the options to acomplish our cut.
In the first block of this panel we have important options to have in mind.
In the type of profile we have three options:
- Outside: cut outside the vector
- Along: go over the vector.
- Inside: position the bit inside the vector.
When you select one of this options next you have the way how you go to prepare the cut, by layers or by the selected objects.
in my case is by selected objects.
In the next blocks I modified the finish depth and going down selected the bit for 1/4 inch diameter, as we know the bit needs to go as deep as the material we wants to cut, to do the job I applied 18mm and in the stepdown applied 9mm to make two passes to accomplish the job
I prefer to use bits of tungsten with four flutes, you can cut a faster speed without the fare of get the bit break.
I left the other parameters by default.
The next parameters in this window are same as the last we modified in the clearance area process, just apply a name to the process and calculate.
When you are done with all the paths yo a tool that is very important before you can cut anything is to simulate the process
in the toolpaths icon just make right click and select the option to simulate all the paths
here you can see if all the toolpaths are in the correct way and you are on to time to make any correction.
If at this point everithing its ok, you can save the G-Code to USB pen drive to move to controller of the CNC Machine.
this process its made doing click on the toolpath menu and move to the save toolpath option
this will bring you a new window that allows you to save the paths in the usb key.
one thing to point is that for this kind of controllers its better not to give large names to the files because suddenly the controller don't read the files.
finally just need to select the format of the machine, in our case we use the Axyz.nc format.
Sending the code to the CNC Router and
After saved the g-code in the USB Drive you are ready to cut on the CNC router.
Some things you need to take care:
Hold the material in the bed with all the clamps
double check around the machine for objects blocking the pass of the router
take with you the safety equipment.
100% attention to the machine during the cutting process.
Here is a brief description of the common functions of the Controller
- This block helps you to move the spindler to a new position in the different axis
- sends you to the home machine
- send you the origin that you previously saved, also have the function to start the cutting process when you select the file inside the usb drive.
- help you to pause or continue a process.
- this stop a process or a command in the screen of the controller.
- open the menu to setup the machine
- this two bottoms define the origin when you move the spindler position.
And finally I show you the result of the fabrication of my table with three legs.