Ahmed Tijjani Ishaq

Ahmed Tijjani Ishaq

Home
About Me
Activities
Final Projects
Activities
  1. Principle and Practice & Project Management
  2. Computer Aided design
  3. Computer controlled cutting
  4. Electronics production
  5. 3D Scanning and printing
  6. Embedded programming
  7. Computer controlled machining
  8. Electronics design
  9. Output devices
  10. Mechanical design & machine design
  11. Input devices
  12. Molding and casting
  13. Networking and communications
  14. Interface and application programming
  15. Wildcard Week
  16. System Integration
  17. Applications and implications, Project development
  18. Invention, intellectual property and income
  19. Project presentation

Week 2: COMPUTER CONTROLLED CUTTING

What I learned this week

This week's learning focused on computer-controlled cutting techniques, encompassing a variety of tools and processes for precision fabrication. In the realm of cutting tools, we explored options like knives (including Cricut, Cameo, and ultrasonic cutters), laser cutters (such as Epilog, Universal, and Trotec), plasma cutters (like Forest Scientific and Torchmate), waterjets (including OMAX and WAZER), and hot wire and wire EDM machines for specialized cutting needs. Each tool offers unique capabilities and applications, ranging from intricate detail cutting to high-speed fabrication across a diverse range of materials.

Assignments

This week's assignment is about understanding laser cutter and vinyl cutter machines in our lab.

Group assignment

  • characterize your lasercutter's focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, joint clearance and types

For details on the characteristic of our laser cutter goto our Group assignment page

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

Vinyl cutting

The vinyl cutter we have in our lab is Roland CAMM-1 GS-24 is a 24" desktop vinyl cutter designed for creating signs, decals, stickers, car graphics, window tints, and more. It’s easy to use, reliable, and produces professional-quality graphics.

For the assignment this week, I cut Git and Apple logos and Henna design. The pictures were gotten online and prepared for cutting in CorelDraw.

Cutting process

After cutting I removed the stickers and pasted them as you can see bellow





Laser Cutter

The second assignment for this week is to characterize the laser cutter in our lab, design a parametric construction kit that can be assembled in multiple ways and cut it with the laser cutter.

To do this I designed two (2) panels that can be assembled as a laptop stand, shelve, foot rest etc. and I called this kit Vuvuti

Design

I used an Onsel/FreeCAD spreadsheet to set up the design parameters such as joint clearance, kerf etc. these parameters are used to achieve a proper fit of the panels during assembly

Designing the side panel



Adding the grooves





Designing the coupling panel



After completing the kit design I export the faces as SVG and import them into CorelDraw

Then I started cutting. I cut the same kit with plywood and acrylic materials using the following settings:

Speed, Power and Rate Setting
Material Power % Speed % Rate (Frequency) %
Plywood 80 20 80
Acrylic 90 20 90







Assembly

Laptop Stand





Shelve















Foot Rest



Complete assembly

Sources