3. Computer - Controlled Cutting¶
The first machine week, in this week we’re learning how to handle with laser cutting and vinyl cutting.
Assignments¶
Our tasks for this week are:
Group assignment:
- do your lab’s safety training
- characterize your lasercutter’s focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, joint clearance and types
Individual assignment:
- cut something on the vinylcutter
- design, lasercut, and document a parametric construction kit, accounting for the lasercutter kerf, which can be assembled in multiple ways, and for extra credit include elements that aren’t flat
Designing Parametrically With Fusion 360¶
I continued to use Fusion 360 for assigments this week, and I learn to use paramteric in 3D Design.
What is parameteric in Fusion 360?
We can name the values as parameter- for example - instead of staying 10cm - you can declare a variable called height and assign the value 10cm and then later you can use height name instead of the value.
And same for width, you can say -> height/2.
Useful Links:¶
- Parametric modeling in Fusion360 explained in 40 seconds + detailed tutorial with example
- Fusion 360 Woodworking: Dovetail Joints - Make them the easy way!
- Designing a Lasercut Laptop Stand with Fusion 360
Fusion Keyboard Shortcuts¶
Common Fusion keyboard Shortcuts
Designing a Lasercut Laptop Stand with Fusion 360¶
In this case , I am going to create a Lasercut Laptop Stand with Fusion 360:
Step1: Create a rough frame with the stand, to modify the angle between lines, remember to use shortcut key - D, and then select the 2 lines, so that you can reset the angle.
Step 2: Setting paremetric, click Modify - Change Parameters - add User Parameter. See the picture below:
Step 3: To extrude - Click Create - Extrude - enter User parameter.
Step 4: To add some fillet so that we don’t really cut ourselves when putting components together, so let’s round off some of these edges by using the Fillet Command.
Select all the edges that you wanna round off.
Step 5:To depulicate the leg-model board. Right click on the Leg component, select ‘copy’.
To paste the component, make sure Activate the top level assembly - Right-click the workspace - Paste.
Step 6: To set legWidth of our laptop stand by Assemble - Joint
Step 7: Create a new sketch on the existing surface of the top of the leg component and project the other geometry.
Step 8: Create a Top component and a new tab with 2-Point Rectangle.
Using Construcion lines and mirror to create other 3 tabs.
Step 9: To extrude all the profiles that I want (except the 4 tabs).
Step 10: Return back to the top level we’ll see that we do have some interference between parts so we need to use a boolean operation to subtract one from the other.
Step 11:To subtract, choose Modify - Combine - select target body - select tool body - keep tool.
The target body is the one that actions being performed on.
Now that we can see:
And I activate the top component, add a few fillets (2 mm) to the edges.
Create offset plane for the new ‘Support’ component.
Make sure we have the intersection of these legs with the current sketch plane: Sketch-Project/Include - Intersect.
And select these two legs, you should see the intersections are projected in.
To extrude the support by thickness/2 mm.
To create a mirror support:
To create a middle plane between the font face and the back face.
Add some fillets to these two support components.
Here comes to the final stand:
Check if any interferences detected.
Step 12: To get the current project out to a laser cutter Just create new sketch on any existing face that you wanna cut.Don’t worry,all of the existing curves and profiles on that plane will be added into the sketch automatically.
Lastly, select the sketch and right click - save as DXF.
To make it a little bit fancy, I sign my English name 😉😉🤩.
Here’s the updated User parameters I set:
