3. Computer controlled cutting¶

Group assignment:¶

Characterize your laser cutter’s focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, and joint clearance.

To see our group assignment click here

Individual assignments:¶

Design, lasercut, and document a parametric press-fit construction kit, which can be assembled in multiple ways. Account for the laser cutter kerf.
Cut something on the vinyl cutter.

LASER CUTTING¶

For more details on the lazer cutter, I invite you to browse through our group work. click here

We’ll start by designing our model, then cut it out using our laser cutter, before assembling our kit.

PARAMETRIC DESIGN ¶

Parametric design offers the flexibility to easily modify the size and certain dimensions of our creation without altering its initial shape. It was this feature that motivated our decision to use parametric design to create our press-fit kit. We chose Fusion 360 software for this task.

We can start.

To begin this week’s mission, I’m going to start by building my model with Fusion 360 software. I’ve been inspired by previous Fab Academy projects. Patrick Jaruschowitz.

DESIGN ON FUSION 360 ¶

I’ll make two pieces: a circle and a triangle

Follow the steps on the following images:

Open software > new sketch

Then select a plan

We are going to create our parameter - Go to the parameters window : In the designe space > Modify > Modify parameters see the picture below

To create new parameters, click on + User parameters and fill in the fields as shown below. To create a new parameter, click on + and fill in the fields that will appear. The parameters we have defined are shown in the following image

We’re going to build our cylindrical piece (our circle)

We select the circle tool and build our circle.

We are now going to make notches so that we can fit our parts together.

Select the dimensioning tool to dimension the circle.

Pour appliquer ce paramètre à une distance, rien de plus simple. Apres avoir cliqué sur l’outil cotation, cliquez sur le segment à mesurer. Cette fois, au lieu de définir une distance, tapez dans la barre d’information la variable Encoche définie en paramètre.

We’ve built two lines and we’re going to select the mirror symmetry tool to duplicate our line but with a mirror effect.

We select the objects to be duplicated and an axis of symmetry > OK .

We have this.

We’ll select the trim tool to cut out parts to form our notches.

We get this.

To reproduce the notches on our entire circle, we’ll use the circular network tool.

We select our objects as before, then our center of symmetry.

Then the quantity

We get this. - When we’re finished with the sketch, click on finish.

We’ll now select the Extrusion tool to give our part a thickness.

We give a value for the thickness

We get this.

We will follow the same steps for our triangle. The difference lies in the design of the triangle. I opted for a triangle circumscribed by a circle.
To draw our triangle, we’ll choose the polygon tool and then the scribed polygon.

We choose the size of the circle, then the sides of the polygon. Here, we’ll choose 3 because we want to draw a triangle.

We choose the arc tool to round off the edges of our triangle. As shown in the image

We get this.

For the notches we will follow the same steps as those explained for the hoop. We get this.

After extrusion, We get this.

For cutting, we will export our files in .dxf format.

Choose a location and export.

Now that we’ve finished the design, we can move on to the cutting. 👏👏👏👏

LAZER CUTTING ¶

For more details on the lazer cutter, I invite you to browse through our group work. click here

To begin with, we’re going to open our files with INKSCAPE. To adjust our design and set the kerf value.

set the kerf value to 0.2

Then we click on the control key on our keyboard and on the letter P simultaneously. Then on print as shown in the following image

This action takes us directly to the lazer cutter software.

Then enter the cutting parameters.

parameters	values
Materials	cardboard
Process Type	Vector
Speed	20%
Power	30%
Frequency	100%
Ciycles	1
Auto focus	off

On the machine, select the file and press the start button to start cutting. Don’t forget to switch on the vacuum cleaner when you start the machine. To prevent the lazer lens from becoming dirty, as this would affect the machine’s efficiency.

we’ve finished with the lazer cutter 👏👏👏👏

VINYL CUTTING¶

About machine¶

In this tutorial, we’ll use the Roland GS-24 vinyl cutter to cut anything from. The GS-24 is a cutting plotter capable of producing various graphic elements thanks to a 58.4 cm cutting width. It’s ideal for creating banners, streamers, vehicle graphics, signs, point-of-purchase (POP) graphics, personalization, rear-projection materials, thermal transfer, stencils, and much more. The GS-24 offers greater stability and 40% more blade pressure

machine features

Désignation	Valeur
Maximum cutting zone	584 mm (L) × 25 000 mm (L)
Cutting speed	10 - 850 mm/s
Blade force	30 - 500gf
Mechanical resolution	0,0125 mm/pas
Distance accuracy	Error less than ±0.2% of distance covered or ±0.1 mm (whichever is greater)
Power source	Dedicated mains adapter Input: 100-240 VAC 50/60 Hz Output: 24 VDC 2.7 A
Rated current	1A

About model¶

For this part I decided to do something fun and really nice😅🤩🥰🤗. I’ve decided to cut out my first name but with a cute font. To do this, I simply entered my first name on my browser to get a basic model to work from.

Here’s the model I found. It’s really beautiful, I love it 🤩🥰🤗.

I’m now going to modify it with INKSCAPE to get a template I can cut.

FIST STEP : EDITING WITH INKSCAPE¶

To do this, I open INKSCAPE following the different steps, but first I’ll modify my image by changing its colors.

We can now process it.

We just need to vectorize our image so that the vinyl cutter software can read it. To do this, follow the steps on the following images.

On the Vinyl cutter¶

Push lever (1) to position the vinyl. Position the vinyl under the white stripes. Make sure the gallet (2) are in the area of the white stripes (3). Push back the lever after positioning the vinyl to hold the vinyl in place.