Week 3
Feb 08: Computer-controlled cutting
Tentical monster pusle
List of task this week
Group assignment
To see the group assignment go here.
My thoughts on this week’s group assignment characterizing the labs lasercutter's focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, joint clearance and types: Since I have been working in a Fab Lab for the last 4.5 years I do understand the laser quate well. So nothing we did surprised me but it turns out that it is really handy to have these samples to help others understand when I am teaching someone how to use the laser.
Cut something on the vinylcutter
Since I will do some Vinyl cutting in my final project I decided to do a test pattern to see how it would turn out.
Lasercut parametric construction kit
I decided to do something a little bit different, so I decided to make a tentacle monster. I started by making the core, the ball all the tentacles would clip on to. I started by making a parameter for the thickness of material I will use and named it ÞykktE. I measured the thickness of the material to be 3.81mm. I used the Create Sketch tool and picked the “floor” phase, I used the circle tool made and made it 60mm and pulled it up to the parameter ÞykktE. Took out the middle of the circle by making a rectangle 6.65mm wide and pulling it down. I made a sketch of another circle on top of the other but 2 ÞykktE smaller and made rectangles that are ÞykktE times ÞykktE+2mm and lined them up in line with the second circle sketch, 3 on one side and 4 on the other.
For the middle part holding the ball together I made a circle that I pulled up and three rectangles that were ÞykktE times ÞykktE+1mm and lined up with the edge of the circle and pulled down to ÞykktE. I went into Modify and put Chamfer on the outer corners. This I ended up changing to six rectangles and a bigger circle.
For the tentacles I needed to make a swirly shape, so I used the Fit point spline to draw out the first shape, then I made copies of it and changed them a bit to make four types of tentacles. I made the snaps them self by making a rectangle, took out a ÞykktE times ÞykktE rectangle at the top middle and made two lines from the corner of that rectangle, curved them a little and took away what was between them. I copied this and put it on the bottom of the tentacles and used the combine tool. After that I put ÞykktE times ÞykktE+2mm rectangles on the tentacles so it would be an option to snap tentacles onto tentacles.
So I could get these shapes into Inkscape to make a cutting file I had to save the top phases of the parts as .dxf, to do that I had to make the top phases into sketches. To do that I went to Create and selected Create Sketch and selected the top of the shape and clicked Finished Sketch, now there is a sketch that is just the shape. I found the sketch on the left, left clicked and selected Save as dxf.
Before I exported the shapes to dxf to put in Inkscape I changed the parameters to 3.65mm to account for the kerf. After exporting each shape to dxf and putting them in Inkscape I changed the line thickness to 0.02mm for the laser cutter and cut some test parts. It turned out that the snaps on the bottom of the tentacles were too thick. So I went back to fusion and made them thinner. After putting the new tentacles in Inkscape I made some tentacle suckers and an eye to raster on to the wood, I had colored the wood black so the tentacle suckers were light.
I cut it out in the laser cutter with the settings Raster 60/100 Vector 11/100/500.
I put it together and I think it looks pretty good.