3. Computer controlled cutting¶
Task in hand¶
- Design something in 2D and cut using vinyl cutter
- Design a parametric construction kit and cut using laser cutter
- Learn how to operate vinyl cutter and laser cutter.
- Keep documenting the process of learning the operation of vinyl cutter and laser cutter.
Group assignment¶
Characterize your lasercutter’s focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, joint clearance and types link to group assignment
Vinyl Cutter¶
The Vinyl cutter that is available in the lab is the Roland CAMM-1 GS-24 model.
The control buttons and the lcd display.
To start off, we were asked to design something to be cut using any 2D design softwares. I wanted a sticker for my laptop and for my phone so instead of designing shapes I downloaded a sharingan(From the anime series Naruto) image, one tattoo of one of my favorite characters from the anime series,’One Piece’ and my favorite band Nirvana’s logo and the name text which were in JPG format. I made a collage of the four pics.
The software we use for the vinyl cutter is easy cut studio which accepts designs in SVG formats only so I used an online JPG to SVG converter to change the image formats. You can also use GIMP to convert image formats but since SVG conversion was not possible in GIMP I used the online converter.
Once converted I opened it in the easy cut studio software for cutting.
Next up, you select the image that you want to cut and then use the ‘cut’ function button to start cutting. Before doing so you have to set the origins, the cutting speed and the cutting force from the control panel of the machine.
For Nirvana sticker I used yellow vinyl roll and for others I used black vinyl rolls. Once the images were cut, I used tweezers to pull out the unwanted parts from the sticker which requred patience and focus which I did successfully. And after that I used the masking tape to pull out the sticker and then I pasted the stickers to my laptop and my phone. During the process I forgot to take pictures for documentation so I only have the images of the stickers pasted on my laptop and phone.
Laser Cutter¶
Group Assignment¶
For this week’s group assignment, we had to characterize our lasercutter’s focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, joint clearance and types.
LASER PRINTER - EPILOG MINI
The laser cutter used in our fablab is of the epilog mini series. The laser cutter has an engraving space of 609mm * 305mm. The laser cutter uses air to remove heat and combustable gases from the cutting space through an exhaust fan. There is also a red dot pointer to help visualize where the laser will fire. The machine has a movable home position feature that allows us to relocate the home position any any engraving space.
The software we used to design files for the laser cutter is Corel Draw. We begin with the design of the pieces on the coral draw software. We are working with two designs to test for the power, speed, kerf and joint clearance.
1. Power and speed test¶
For the power and speed test, we made an engraving with different power and speeds such that we print them individually to see the difference. Doing so we look at the level of power used and difference in the engraving. We make necessary settings on the printing software (Auto Focus, Check size of the print and any errors. Then we look at the Laser cutter and set appropriate home point for it to start working.
The figure below shows the image we have drawn in CoralDraw to look at the difference in power and speed of the laser cutting machine:
Engraving using same power and different speed
Engraving using same speed and different power
2. Kerf and joint clearance¶
For the Kerf and Joint clearance, we worked on designing a shape with slots and cut it with the laser cutter. Then, using vernier caliper we measured the thickness and width of the slots to look at the errors in cutting. The figure below shows the shape we have made in CoralDraw software and cut is shown below that.
We measured the slot sizes using vernier caliper and compared with the given dimensions. It was observed that there was less than 0.1mm of difference in the slot width and length printed with the laser cutter. Therefore we considered the laser cutter to be perfectly pitched.
Individual assignment¶
Design a parametric construction kit and cut using laser cutter. This week is fun as we get to learn to operate the machines. Vinyl cutter was fun, now its time to explore the laser cutter. Firstly i had to design the shapes and the software I used was Fusion 360.
I had nothing in specific that I wanted to make, I just made some random shapes and for doing so I decided to use a square and a circle for the press fits. FIrst of I stared by making a square and a circle.
Next up I set some parameters to be used to ease my designing.
Then I used center rectangles to cut slots in the square from the center of the length of the square so that it turns out to be equal in both ends.
Next I used the extrude function to extrude the shape.
Next I project the sketch to be converted to dxf file.
I selected the projected sketch and then saved the sketch in dxf format.
Time to take the file to corel draw and laser cut it. At first I set the power of the laser cutter to 60% and tried to cut it but the press fits wouldn’t come out clean.
So I set the power to 75% and the press fits were cut nicely and came out perfect.
