Week 03: Computer Controlled Cutting¶
Weekly Assignment:¶
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
- For extra credit, include elements that aren't flat
Start with a 2d file like an .svg for both.
Blade Cutters¶
- Use a blade to cut material
- Can also use a pen to draw
- Make sure settings are set to your material type
- Great for paper projects
Cricut¶
Software is not user friendly unless you are using premade projects. Upgraded software package is needed or each cut must be uploaded separately.
Silhouette¶
Can do some modifications in software included, also has an upgrade option.
Vinyl Idea Sticker¶
This document follows the journey from sketch to sticker. Idea Sticker - CorelDraw Design
Laser Cutters¶
- Uses a laser to cut material
- More dangerous
- More costly
- More upkeep
- More versatility: material, size, engraving
Epilog Laser Engraver¶
Safety: hair back, vents on, fire blanket close by. Never leave the area! For detailed safety protocol see our group assignment page.
A good friend of mine from Branding Agency SPARK Strategic Ideas wanted to create a memorable direct mail piece for their client, Bruce's Yams, and came to me with the hopes of laser engraving sweet potatoes to ship through the mail. We spent many hours making it work. My lessons learned from engraving a sweet potato: 1. Use a tub of rice to level out the potato as best you can. 2. Mark your starting point with a tape grid, and line up each potato to that mark for that print file. Then switch to the next print file. Each potato had 4 prints in different locations that depended on the shape of the potato. Lining up the potato each time was very difficult because the camera's image would not line up with the cut file since the bed was set so low in order to accommodate the setup. 3. A small flat potato is better than a huge lumpy one. 4. Clean the machine, the steam makes the smoke stick to the laser.
I am pleased to say that SPARK Strategic Design will receive an American Advertising Award February 26th, 2026 for this sweet potato project!
Group work kerf test:¶
This is our group site page for this week where we created, and executed a kerf test. We also compared the image quality of photo engraving settings.
Week 03 Group Assignment - Adult
An interesting observation from the kerf test was that in 75% of the cuts one side of the square varied from the other. Looking at the side of a cut square you can see there is a curve to the cut. The bottom of the square was .01inch less than the top, which is to be expected as the beam of the laser expands before and after the focal point. This curve did not match the expected angle however, since the smallest measurement was actually in the center of the material. Furthermore, this curve was seen on the side against the grain of the top vanier. This may be because of the internal grain pattern or glue. (On a related note, standard kerf pattern live hinges are more flexible along the grain. I wonder if that is because of additional material being cut?)
This image shows the cuts from our speed change test, where we changed the speed settings to see what the optimal setting was for a vector cut. Our results matched the lab recommended settings.
Parametric Construction Kit¶
