4. Group Assignment - Computer controlled cutting¶
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This week goal is to find the kerf and the proper cutting parameters for a specific material.
Cardboard (Amal Ashoor)¶
For this assignment, I choose the material to be cardboard with 6 mm thickness. Also, I draw a square with my initial letter “A” using CorelDraw software. I have tried seven different combinations of speed, power, PPI to get the proper cardboard cutting parameters using the Universal Laser System interface. The letter R in the table is refers to Red color or cutting and B to black color or engraving.
| Trial | Power | Speed | Frequency | Observations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1B | 27% | 80% | 500 | Initial guess of the parameters. |
| 1R | 30% | 80% | 500 | Initial guess of the parameters. |
| 2B | 30% | 80% | 500 | Power was increased only.Thus, this result in clear engraving. |
| 2R | 45% | 80% | 500 | Power was increased only.Thus, this result in a slightly deeper. |
| 3B | 30% | 80% | 500 | No change. |
| 3R | 45% | 60% | 500 | Reduce the cutting speed cause a slightly deeper cut. |
| 4B | 30% | 80% | 500 | No change. |
| 4R | 45% | 30% | 500 | Reduce the cutting speed to half the figure in the previous trial improved the cutting. |
| 5B | 30% | 60% | 500 | Reduce the engraving speed cause the engraving to become unclear. |
| 5R | 65% | 30% | 500 | Increase the cutting power cause the cutting to enhanced. |
| 6B | 30% | 80% | 500 | Return the engraving settings to the one in trial four. |
| 6R | 100% | 15% | 500 | Increase the cutting power and reduce the speed cause the laser to penetrate the other face of the cardboard |
| 7B | 30% | 80% | 500 | No change. |
| 7R | 100% | 10% | 500 | Reduce the cutting speed to 10% cause the design to be easily removed from the cardboard |
Then to calculate the kerf, I draw a rectangle with 6 cm width and 4 cm height using Fusion 360 software. Then, divid the inner part of the rectangle to 12 equal smaller rectangles with 0.5 cm width using the rectangular pattern feature. Then, I laser cut the design on the same cardboard with 0.6 cm thickness using the same proper cutting parameters. After that, I calculated the kerf using the equation: kerf= (theoretical length- measured length)/(# of sections) kerf= (6 - 5.8)/(12)= 0.0167 cm= 0.167 mm
MDF Wood (Yousif Jalil)¶
Here is the Results i got using the Laser Machine, The Material i used is MDF Wood, here are the results i got for laser engraving.
After that i went to try the kerf Adjustment, i did two tries, one with smaller sample and another one with bigger sample
Here the total rectangle length = 60mm number of rectangles = 12 rectangle length after engraving = 58.22mm k = (60-58.22)/12 = 0.148mm
similarly here
Here the total rectangle length = 120mm number of rectangles = 12 rectangle length after engraving = 118.53mm k = (60-58.22)/12 = 0.1225mm