3. Computer Controlled Cutting¶

This week I explored various 2D and 3D design softwares.

Individual Assignment¶

Design, lasercut, and document a parametric construction kit, accounting for the lasercutter kerf, which can be assembled in multiple ways.
Cut something on the vinyl cutter.

Vinyl Cutting¶

For vinyl cutting, I needed to make a sticker with multiple colors and pieces of vinyl. One of my favorite Disney movies is Moana, so I decided I would vinyl cut a sticker of Hei Hei, the chicken from Moana. Hei Hei is also very colorful and seemed like a design I would easily be able to split by color. This is the image I chose to trace. The software I used to design the sticker was Silhouette Studio. I started out trying to use CorelDraw to trace the image and then sending it over to Silhoutte Studio, but I eventually decided it would just be easier to trace it in Silhouette Studio. I tried out several different images to see whoich ones would trace the best, and even made the silly mistake of tracing the colorful half of this image, instead of simply tracing the outline half.

Using the trace tool in CorelDraw:

When I tried to trace only half of the image, part of the second chicken also got traced, so I had to select the unwanted lines and use the delete key to delete them. Initially, I also only traced the outline of the chicken without the inner lines, which I later had to change.

Hei Hei Outline Traced:

Hei Hei Outline Traced and Excess Lines Deleted:

Hei Hei Retraced with Inner Lines:

I initially wanted to create several design files with each file only containing the lines I wanted each specific color to cut out, but after several attempts to create these designs, Tyler Russell advised that I just cut the whole chicken on each color vinyl I was planning on using.

In ninth grade engineering class, I had to create a vinyl cutting workflow, so below is the modified workflow from ninth grade with specific changes I made for my multicolored sticker.

1.Open the Silhouette Studio file and download it.

2.Under the design tab, make sure it is the right size and design you want, and it is in the upper left corner of the screen.

3.Select a scrap piece of vinyl just big enough for the size of the cut with some extra room (can be trimmed later).

4.Place the vinyl on the upper right corner cutting mat, and make sure it is fully stuck down.

5.Line the left edge of the cutting mat up with the arrows on the left side of the vinyl cutter, and press the up arrow on the screen all the way on the right.

6.In Silhouette Studio, navigate to the send tab in the upper left corner.

7.Make sure all the settings are correct and then press send.

8.Once it is finished cutting, press the down arrow on the vinyl cutter to unload the vinyl

9.After taking the vinyl off the mat, trim it as small as possible and then peel off the outer vinyl and any inner pieces from your design that you do not want in the final product usinf tweezers.

10.Repeat steps 3-9 for each color vinyl.

Here are all my different colors of vinyl with the excess parts weeded out:

11.Take a piece of transfer tape, just big enough to cover the whole design. Start out placing the transfer tape on the color you want to be on top. For me, I wanted the black outline of Hei Hei to be on top, so I did that one first. After that, the order did not matter as much. I did the yellow next. Elle Hahn helped me immensely with this part of the process. Here is a picture of the yellow and black pieces of vinyl on the transfer tape:

Next, I added the green.

Then, I added the red. When I added the red, there was accidentally a piece I had forgotten to pick out, and I did not like the way you could slightly see it sticking out underneath the yellow part, so I used tweezers to remove it.

This was my finished sticker:

12.When ready to place your sticker, peel off the backing and place it on very tight. Peel off the transfer tape.

This is my sticker on the wall of stickers in the Charlotte Latin Fab Lab:

Overall, I really enjoyed making this sticker, and it was probably my favorite part fo Fab Academy so far. It was also very cool to see what designs other people in the lab chose to make because most people chose a sticker that had some sort of meaning to them.

Parametric Construction Kit¶

The next part of this week’s assignment was to design a parametric construction kit. Since I have some prior experience using Fusion 360, I decided to create my parametric design in Fusion 360. Before the start of Fab Academy, I watched some of Kevin Kennedy’s Learn Fusion 360 in 30 Days YouTube tutorials, including one about parametric design and one about constraints, which were very helpful for this project. Parameters are when you create equations and relationships to control the size of designs that are essentially assigned to a variable that you can use when creating dimensions. For thsi construction kit, EVERY time I needed to enter a numerical dimension, I assigned the number to a parameter. Looking back on my notes from Kevin Kennedy’s videos, I just realized that I had written that using modeling fillets can be better than fillets because fillets can remove constraints, and avoid mirroring the sketch, mirror component or 3D body instead. These were two mistakes I made when creating my construction kit. This is a pdf of the notes I wrote while watching Kevin Kennedy’s video on sketch constraints. Constraints became a very important part of this project because I wanted all of my component sketches to be fully constrained in order for the design to allow parameters to be changed seamlessly. After exploring several students’ previous parametric construction kits (listed in helpful links at the bottom of this page), I decided to follow Angelina Yang’s Week 3 documentation.

Designing the Kit in Fusion 360¶

Square Component¶

Every time, I wanted to make a different shape, I made sure to make a new component to help stay organized. The first shape I wanted to try to make was a square. I used the square tool to make a square and set the side length dimensions to a new parameter. As mentioned above, every time I needed a numerical value for a dimension, I made a parameter. Initally, I did not realize Fusion 360 has a Trim tool, which deletes line segments that intersect with other lines before the intersections when clicked. Fusion’s Trim tool is very similar to Virtual Segment Delete, one of my favorite tools in CorelDraw. Befor I asked ChatGPT, and it recommended using the Trim tool, I was tryign to use the equal constraint to make two lines equal with a space in between for the slot. This way was not very practical and was unnecessarily difficult. Whenever you see “fx:” as a dimension, it means there is a parameter around that dimension.

At first, I tried creating the slot on one side of the square and using construction lines to mirror the slot to the other three sides of the square, but there were several issues that arised, including that the constraints did not mirror with the slot.

This was my finished square with grooves before I added fillet.

Once I tried to add fillet around the slot (as a parameter), everything got all messed up because the constraints got removed. I spent several hours trying to mess around with the constraints to try and fully constrain the sketch with fillet added. I tried using ChatGPT to tell me where I needed constraints, and although it was not the most helpful in choosing constraints, it did help me realize that the blue lines are the areas where the design is not fully constraint. If you can move the line, then, to make it fully constrained, you need to make it so you cannot move the line, using whatever constraint necessary to do so. I ended up using close to all the constraints throughout the process of designing the entire kit, and I definitely have a much better understanding of constraints now.

Circle and Hexagon Components¶

Next, I wanted to make a circle with slots. I created one slot using the rectangle tool around one of the edges of the circle, assigned it dimensions, and then used the circular pattern tool to copy the slot around the circle.

However, when I used the circular pattern tool, my sketch was not fully constrained. I thought it was interesting how adding a constraint to one of the slots mirrored onto all the slots because of the circular pattern.

I used the Move tool to move the circle component away from the square component, so they did not overlap.

Next, I wanted to make a polygon shape. I created a new component and a new sketch, and then I created a polygon using the Edge Polygon tool.

I used the Circular Pattern tool for this as well to mirror the slots. When trying to use this tool, I realized that I could only have a multiple of 3 for the number of slots or they would not be connected to the edge of the hexagon.

I tried to use the Fix constraint to fully constrain the hexagon with slots, but I later found that was not a good solution.

Neither my circle or my hexagon components were fully constrained, and I wanted to seamlessly be able to change the parameters, so I needed to figure out how to fully constrain both shapes. This was definitely the most challenging part of this week. I consulted with ChatGPT throughout this process, which taught me a lot about constraints in general. Sometimes, I inserted screenshots of my sketch into ChatGPT to get some advice on how to fully constrain the sketch. This was helpful, but I ended up using some trial and error and just messing around with all the constraints. The circular pattern tool was very helpful because, as I mentioned previously, the constraints mirrored onto all the slots, so I only needed to deal with one for them all to work. Additionally, once I figured out the circle, the hexagon was much easier to fully constrain.

This is a picture of my unconstrained circle:

ChatGPT recommended that adding dimensions might help fully constrain the circle, but that did not work for me.

I decided to just redo the circle to see if it would just be easier to start from scratch and add constraints as I went.

This is the fully constrained circle before mirroring the slot:

This is the fully constrained polygon:

Because I used the Fix constraint on the polygon, when I changed the parameters, there was an error.

I had to change the polygon so that the Fix constraint was not used.

Here are all my parameters after creating the square, circle, and hexagon:

Straight Connector and Bent Connector Components¶

The straight connector and bent connector components were much easier to design once I had gotten more comfortable with how to fully constrain sketches.

To make the straight connector, I made a rectangle with a circle on each end and then removed the overlapping lines using the Trim tool.

Then, I added a groove on one side and mirrored it over to the other side by creating a construction line on the midpoint of the rectangle’s long sides.

I also tried to use the Fix constraint to fully constrain the connector, but again, I later ran into the issue of not being able to change the parameters without getting an error.

Here is the straight connector:

I struggled to figure out how to make the bent connector look the way I wanted it to while still being fully constrained. I eventually figured it out, and this was probably the most fulfilling parametric shape I made.

Here are some screenshots of the design process:

Final bent connector design:

Laser Cutting and Assembling the Kit¶

I exported the file from Fusion 360 as a .dxf file and imported it into CorelDraw. In CorelDraw, all the shapes were all overlapping each other. Each component was also grouped together which was nice, so I could just drage each component to a new spot.

There were also several extra lines that I did not want to cut, including the construction lines inside the square. I used the Virtual Segment Delete tool to remove these unnecessary lines.

In ninth grade engineering class, I had to create a laser cutting workflow, so below is the modified workflow from ninth grade with specific changes I made for my parametric construction kit.

1.Ensure the fan is turned on.

2.Open the CorelDraw file in Google Drive on the computer and download the file.

3.Open the file and if cutting, not rastering, make sure everything is hairline.

4.On the computer, press “File” and in the dropdown menu, press “Print”.

5.Get the cardboard and place it in the laser cutter. Make sure to line it up in the corner and close the lid gently afterwards.

6.On the pop-up the computer opened, select your process type and material and other properties if necessary.

7.On the computer, drag the item you are cutting over the material, in the corner, so you do not waste materials.

8.Click “Print” to send your file to the laser cutter.

9.Press the second button on the bottom of the small screen and drag the joystick down until the material you are cutting is lined up with the edge in the laser cutter.

10.Press the fourth button on the bottom and use the joystick to move the laser in the area of cutting.

11.Select autofocus.

12.Press “Play” to start the cut.

*** If emergency, stop cut right away with the red dial that says, “EMERGENCY STOP” ***

The first time I cut it, I wanted to test it out and make sure all the shapes fit together nicely. The only parts that I did not like about thsi cut that I needed to change before printing more of each component were that the straight connector was slightly misshapen and the pieces were much bigger than I wanted. After cutting, I returned to Fusion 360 and fixed the straight connector and changed the parameters to make all the components smaller.

Here are the big pieces:

Here is a helicopter I made with the big pieces:

Here is the CorelDraw file with all the resized components and multiple of some components:

I copied and pasted some of the component designs in CorelDraw but made sure not to resize them at all because that would make the slot for the cardboard too thin. If I wanted to resize the design, I needed to use Fusion 360.

Here are all the smaller pieces cut out:

Here is a man I made with almost all the small pieces:

Group Assignment¶

For our group assignment, we needed to characterize our lasercutter’s focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, joint clearance and types. You can read more about the entire group project here. This week I worked with Elle Hahn, Andrew Puky, and Jenna Chebaro

Kerf Test¶

One of the ways I contributed to the group project by helping design and test the kerf test with Elle Hahn and Andrew Puky. We created a simple square in CorelDraw and sent it over to vector cut in the laser cutter. Then, we used a digital caliper to measure the square. Before doing this test, I was not aware of what kerf is, and measuring the kerf was helpful in making the measurements for my parametric construction kit.

Speed Power Frequency Test¶

I also helped design and cut the Speed Power Frequency test. To design this test, Elle Hahn, Andrew Puky, and I referenced previous groups’ documentation to see how they had laid out the test. We ended up creating our own unique design in CorelDraw that had a series of 30 lines with speed, frequency, and power at the top and percentages in increments of 10 on the right. We also chose to make each row of lines different colors, so over at the laser cutter, we could separate the design by color and alter the settings for each color. Although this was the initial plan, when Elle and I were laser cutting, we realized that we would be better off just changing the setting for speed, power, or frequency, not all three, so we altered the design to only have one column of lines, and we just ran that cut twice. The first time we did the speed frequency power test, all the lines ended up looking the same. When we mentioned this to Mr. Dubick, he said it was because power and speed have an inverse relationship, so when power increases and speed decreases, the lines will turn out the same. To fix this, we laser cut again but made the speed and power different. For example, we set speed to 10% and power to 100% and kept increasing speed and decreasing power in increments of 10%. After doing this, all the lines looked the same again. We tried to change the settings so speed was 10% and power and frequency were 100% and kept power and frequency the same while increasing speed by 10% increments. This time, it worked, so we repeated this process for power as well. We incremented power by 10% and kept speed and frequency and 100%. After figuring out the settings we altered the design again in CorelDraw to better format the lines and percentages. This was probably my favorite part of the group project because although I have some experience with laser cutting, I have never really played around with the settings before, which I found very interesting.

Focus Test¶

I also helped design the Focus test. To design this test, Elle Hahn, Andrew Puky, and I referenced previous groups’ documentation to see how they had designed the test. After deciding on the best design and helping trace the Lightning McQueen image we found online, Elle Hahn set up the settings and laser cut the test. I did not really help with this test as much as the other ones.

Joint Clearance Test¶

Out of all the tests we ran in the group project, I definitely contributed the most to this one. I created the design in CorelDraw, laser cut it, and ran the test. I designed a series of rectangles inside a rectangle in CorelDraw and used Virtual Segment Delete to make each of them a slot for a square. Each slot was a different size, ranging from 3.5 mm to 3.9 mm. We made sure that the line thickness was hairline for this part, so the shape would vector cut. We also added the number labels, but those were not hairline because we wanted those to raster engrave. The goal of the test was to choose the best size the thickness of cardnoard to have a snug but not too tight fit. After testing the cardboard square made in the kerf test in all the slots, we determined that 3.7 mm had the best fit out of all the other measurements.