Wildcard Week¶
In Bottrop we are already kind of known as the drinking lab and I thought I would keep up with the tradition of building tools to keep you hydrated, so this week I made a simple bottle opener using our metal lasercutter.
Design in Fusion¶
In previous assignments like 3D Scanning and Printing or Computer Controlled Machining I never really left Fusion’s solid design space so I wanted to try and see what the sheet metal tab has to offer.
As usual I started with a basic sketch.
Since I was no longer working with a solid body but rather a virtual metal construction, I had to use the Flange tool to give the sketch a thickness.
The exact thickness is defined via the material parameters.
The Flange tool is not only used to thicken surfaces but also to define where the part is bent.
Besides being a little too boring, a simple sheet of metal with a cutout would probably be too flimsy to be used as a bottle opener.
To give my design more stability, I added two bends on the sides.
After that I filleted the sharp corners.
Next I created a flat pattern.
With the bends flattened out, I got this shape which I exported as a .DXF file. You can find it in the Download section at the bottom of this page.
I then imported the file into RDWorksV8 to convert it into a .plt file, which is also linked in the Download section at the bottom of this page.
Preparing the lasercutter¶
Over at our GS Lasersystems 130130 FL metal lasercutter I started CypCut, the software to prepare 2D designs for cutting, which immediately prompted me to home the machine.
Since I exported my file with guide lines for the bends I wanted to only engrave those instead of cutting them, so I marked the lines and assigned them to a different layer.
In the layers menu I then selected different parameter presets for cutting and engraving a 1,5mm aluminium sheet.
These parameters are in a whole different ballpark than those for “regular” lasercutters.
This machine has a maximum output power of 1500W while our next biggest one has only one thenth of that.
Other lasercutters would blow compressed air around the cutting area to prevent the material from burning up, this one however uses nitrogen at about 15 bars of pressure.
Cutting operations run at a speed of 4 m/min and 100% power, while engraving operations run at 8 m/min with only 18% power.
Laser frequency is set to 5000 Hz which is also the max for our other machines.
With the parameters done, I placed said sheet into the machine.
Next I moved the toolhead over to where I wanted to cut, and made sure that there was enough space by running a frame command.
After closing and locking the machine’s door, I ran another frame command just to be sure and started the cutting job.
The job went off without a hitch and left me with a beautiful little piece of metal.
There were some small but rather sharp bits left around the sides so I gathered a file, sandpaper and a deburring tool to get rid of those.
Much better… now the bottle opener only opens bottles instead of the user’s hand.
Bending the part¶
I loaded the piece into our bending machine and tried bending it to a little over 90°.
Turns out aluminium is kind of brittle so I had to redo the whole thing with steel.
Settings wise steel uses pretty much the same parameters as aluminium, only the laser’s duty cycle is reduced from 18% to 13%.
Deburring the steel part was kind of a pain and left some pretty deep scratch marks on the surface so I borrowed one of Lars’ super fine sanding pads and gave the whole thing a bit of a brushed look.
Back to the bending machine I went.
This time it didnt break.
And that concludes this week’s contribution to our ongoing mission of keeping you hydrated.
See you next time!