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Group Assisnment Week 3

Write something at the front​

During this week, our lab was not fully ready so we waited quite a bit.

This is the machine where we are going to do the cutting:

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What are we the group going to do this week​

The assignment is including tasks below:

  • Characterize your laser cutter’s focus, power, speed, rate
  • Determine the kerf & joint clearance

Since we need to record all our work in the group website, we will have one specific page managing it: Chaihuo Makerspace.

Test the machine and get the curf​

We are going to use the acrylic board to do the cutting, for the first we need to know the thickness of it:

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It is about 3mm, so on the Onshape I need to design a test board for testing the curf of it. Then I can make sure this board will be complete fit:

I design a board from 2.5mm to 3.1mm:

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but it is a little no in the order, so I add some Variable Parameters:

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for the width I think 1.5mm is fine.

Then I add the different cutting intervals as 1.5mm.

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for the heigh I think 8mm is fine.

Then I add the different cutting intervals as 8mm.

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Since the software for machine seems not supporting editing different contents, I have to make two layers for it cutting.

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Then I output two DXF files:

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And send them to the machine

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note

The parameter is 95 Maximum light intensity, 90 minimum light intensity, 20 mm/s working speed.

And the power is 91.

Then I should have torn the paper off the acrylic sheet so it wouldn't catch fire:

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Setting the zero ppoint:

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Finally, setting the power of laser as 90%, and the speed as 20mm/S, as recommended before.

The I can send the file from the software to the machine and begin the cutting:

The first is brkoen and the second one is great:

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But it also gave me a chance to see which one would fit right in:

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I forgot to cut the text first. But after checking with the files I design, the curf should be 0.6mm.