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3. Computer controlled cutting

Weekly Objectives

  • Group assignment:

  • do your lab’s safety training

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

  • Individual assignment:

  • cut something on the vinyl cutter
  • 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.

Group Project- Tyler Russell, Kathryn Wu, Zijia Fang

I was assigned for the Focus Test. I tested out what different focuses can do to the restered images. I found out that 0.00 and +0.2 focuses are the two best options for rastering images because they were darker.

You can see our whole group site here.

Vinyl Cutting

Design

This week, we were doing a sticker using vinyl cuntter! First, I chose an image that I wanted form internet and downloaded it.

I only did the left character Eve because Tyler Russell did the right chracter.

I imported the image into CorelDraw and cropped out the part I did not need. Then I converted it to a bitmap image using Detailed Logo feature

This is a comparison between Before and After of the image.

I did not want to cut out my sticker using too many colors, so I deleted colors until there were only 4 left when I did the converting bitmap.

Then I ungrouped the image and deleted the part I did not want.

Note: I was gonna do the stars. However, when I want to trace them in Silhouette Studio, it was not working. So I gave up on the stars:(

Next, I saved the file as SVG and imported it into Silhouette Studio. With my friend Tyler’s help, I figured out how to trace the image. I first went to Design Tab and then clicked on Trace and traced the whole image.

If it could split the layers like the image below, you are ready to print!

Just rememeber: delete everything but the outline traced (the red one in the picture below).

Then I was ready to print. Noah Smith told me to select the material Vinyl, Glossy and it would automatically set up the Blade Depth.

Printing Preparation

First, I picked out all the vinyl paper I was going to use and cut them to approximately the same size. Then I sticked the vinyl on to the sticky mat sheet.

Do NOT take off the adhesive layer on the vinyl paper when you put it on the mat! Otherwise you need to redo yours.

Load the mat into vinyl cutter and you are ready to cut! I tested out on this glittering gold vinyl and it came out good.

Then I cut out the image on every single vinyll paper I prepared. Next, I got rid of the parts I did not need on each one.

Then I started to assemble them together using transfer tape. Finally, I got a cute Eve!

At last, I got a beautiful Eve on the window, next to her friend:)

Parametric Kit

First, I scrolled over Anglina’s site and got a sense of what parametric design is. Then I started design my own files.

Design in Fusion 360

I fisrt started with a square of 50mm*50mm.

Then I started to defined the parameter in the Parametric Panel. I defined the lengths that I needed such as the kerf, the tab width and length and the square length.

Notes: Kerf is the width of the material removed when laser cutting. Since I wanted the cardbord to fit into the gaps I created, I needed to take kerf into account.

I typed the parameter like the image below so that when I chnaged the value of a parameter the dimension would change accordingly.

I first created one tab. Then I used the Mirror tool and one parametric design is completed!

Neil asked us to use Chamfer feature to make the entrance of the tab wider so that it is easire for the card board to slide in.

Notes: Remember to use the Chamfer feature under the Sketch tab, NOT the Solid tab!

The second one I created was a circle with 5 tabs. I used a pntagon to reference the positions of the tabs.

Since the Chamfer feature did not work on circles, I did Fillet feature instead.

The last I created was a rectangle with 2 tabs.

CoralDraw Part

After I finish my designs, I saved the file as DXF file following Angelina’s documentation. Then I imported the file into CorelDraw. However, when I imported my file, it appeared as three lines in CorelDraw.

With Elle Hahn’s help, I figured out that since I created my sketch on the Front plane in Fusion 360, I needed to change the 3D Projection to Front.

There were some extra lines on my deisgn. I used the Virtual Segment Delete tool to get rid of the lines.

Then I set up the cutting settings using the sheet provided.

Since I only need to cut out the shape, I chose Vector only.

Important: Do not forget to change the piece layout to the actual cardboard size!

When I first printed my designs, I did not change the dimensions of my file at all. Then I realized the size was too big. Then I found out that the position it cut was not the right place. So I double checked the dimension of the actual cardboard size and figured out that the size I did was wrong. Then I corrected it.

Then I made my designs in CorelDraw smaller. That was the biggest mistake I made because I forgot that the thickness of the cardboard is always the same. If I scaled the design smaller, the tab would be narrower as well. So the 6 small sets of my parametric kits did not work very well. The piece were hard to put together.

However, thanks to the 2 big sets I printed previously, I was able to use them to make something.

It looks like a cannon!

Look at my magic stick!

I have a new pair of glasses:)

Group Website Image Problem

When I put the photos onto the group website, only two of the photos worked on the actual website. I checked the local repository and found out all of the phtotos were in the right images folder. I asked Noah Smith for help. He suggested me to look on mkdoc server to see if the images work. I checked it and found out that all of the pictures worked in the local server. Then Tyler Russell helped me check the pipeline of the repo and found nothing. He suggested me to use ChatGPT to figure out the difference between the paths of the wrong image and the shown-up image. Then I figured out that among the names of the wrong images, there was a blank space. But the name of the right image worked well. So I deleted all the spaces in the names of the images and it worked!

Learning: Do NOT put a space in your file name if you do not want to trouble shoot!

File Download

You can download all my files here.

Last update: February 12, 2025