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16. Wildcard week

Design and produce something with a digital fabrication process (incorporating computer-aided design and manufacturing) not covered in another assignment, documenting the requirements that your assignment meets, and including everything necessary to reproduce it.

Inspiration

  • The address where I live is assigned as Lot 02. Here in my country (Peru) to assign a number must be done through the public registry or the provincial municipality of Tacna but this must be consigned according to the correlative number of the avenue or street. In my case it corresponds to the number 303. I had since several months ago, engrave the number on a piece of brick pastry and paste it on the wall where I live.

Laser cutting machine CO2 MicroStep Spain

  • Having already used the digital fabrication equipment we have at FabLab Vigil (7 pieces of equipment) I decided to use the laser cutting machine and test its robustness always taking into account the safety rules that the manufacturer gives us for the use of the equipment. Here is a picture of the equipment mentioned:

Use and Operation

  • I thought it would be a good idea to read this before using the laser cutting equipment. I also posted the mode of operation on the wall on the side of the machine for you to read before you turn it on when you are not sure how to turn it on.

  • The equipment alarms and shuts down automatically in the event of a malfunction or malfunction during the cut-off. Automatic shutdown should be avoided.

Suitable materials

  • The cobblestone brick that I am going to engrave can be considered as ceramic.

Design

  • First I make the measurements of the upper area that I am going to consider for the engraving. In this case it is 18.2 cm long.

  • The width measurement is 8.4 cm. It is not necessary to know the thickness in this case is 4 cm.

  • The program used by the laser cutter is CNCLaser v8.0.

  • I start by making a rectangle as a reference, and then add the text.

  • I set the number 303 inside the reference rectangle.

  • I assign power of 20% and speed of 130 mm/s to test

  • Then I add a 2nd rectangle that will be engraved as the frame of the number 303.

  • I already have the design ready to send to the laser cutter.

  • I test in the simulation to see how it will look like.

  • Before engraving on the Adoquin, I make an engraving on the 3mm MDF to see the final aspect.

  • Now if I do engraving on the cobblestone brick. This video shows the engraving process on the cobblestone.
  • By opening the lid of the laser cutter I can get a closer look.
  • This is how it looks.

  • I saw that the number when using cut is not very showy, so the cut of layer 1 (blue color) I changed it to scratch mode.

  • Finally, I load again the modified adoquin.rld file and start cutting. Here is the final result in the video:
  • I lift the lid and this is how it looks.
  • A hero’s image.

  • Finally I can conclude that the C02 laser cutting machine we have at FabLAB Vigil can engrave texts and figures on brick..

Design Files

Description Files
Grab_Adoquin.rld Adoquin.rld
Grab_Adoquin.rd Adoquin.rd

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.