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individual assignment
laser cutting
For this week's assignment, I want to make a fab academy tracker in the style of the perpetual calendar designed by Giancarlo Cipri for MoMA
I sketched out the parts I would need to make and the rough dimensions for the parts on paper first
I made the vector drawing on Rhino 8.
I used grasshopper to parametrically design the tracker.
I tried to make only one offset line and join it with the one i created. But i realised quickly that once i bake the lines into rhino, i would not be able to parametrically control them anymore. so i make 2 offsets, circles at the end and made them into pipes before baking them into rhino.
The design for the tracker is ready. I want to cut the lines and engrave the text.
I thought i would use acrylic transparente and acrylic frosted red.
I also made fit test files for the sliders and the screws
laser cutting
thak u so much to Gennaro and Daniele for helping me in the laser lab to prepare the files for cutting and the set up the machine.
I used the Rayjet 500 to cut 3mm acrylic and followed the settings on the test swatches.
Started by checking the focus on the laser
I used some of Gennaro's scrap material for cutting the sliders since it needed very less material
I put the file in a USB drive and put it into the computer connected to the Rayjet 500.
I designed my vector file in Rhino 8. And then I saved it as a Rhino 7 file.
Open the file in rhino on the comuputer connected to the Rayjet 500 and check the cutting line is Red. Then type 'print' to open the laser software.
I used the settings of the test swatch to cut, and it worked but the pieces were hard to take out. so I increased the power to 90 and reduced the speed. The cuts later were perfext and the cuts fell right off the board
some test parts for testing tolerance and smooth gliding of the slider and the corner nails
cutting the main board
With the type set to cut, the values of 'marking' in the test swatch the cut turned out a good engraving on the tester swatches that i made.
on the main part, i used the engrave settings. The cut finished perfectly but for engraving, the laser kept going over 3 spots and repeating one like of cut. The engraving did not work on this one.
vinyl cutting
the laser lab was about to close soon so I decided to make the text detail with vinyl cutting. here are the final lasercut pieces.
getting the curves ready in rhino
fir cutting I used a silhouette cameo 5 and the software silhouette studio to prepare for cutting
the image exported into silhouette studio in a broken way.
I asked Google and in the forum it said to export with a better scheme like 2007 Polylines. it worked!
Starting the cut by doing a test
cutting the vinyl and sticking onto the acrylic base.
i noticed way too late that i vertically flipped the base and stuck it on the other side. So I just accepted it and now it works right to left :)
assembling the pieces of the tracker
the final piece!
here are some timelapses of me desinging with grasshopper, laser cutting and individually sticking every alphabet onto the board. (because i couldn't find my transfer paper)
group assignment
We printed the parts to check the tolerance fit that Dani showed us to design on Fusion. Link to group assignment.
notes
I take notes in my notebook generally, and documenting that is taking the most time—so I will put pictures of my notebook here and document just the assignment parts! Whenever I have time I can transcribe these notes.
In the global and local class, we got an introduction to CAM and its applications in the fablab. Shyam then gave us a tour of the cutters we have and explained how to set them up, focus them, prepare the files, how to turn on the vents, and how to book the machines.
