Week03

Week 3 group assignment:

• Do your lab’s safety training
• Characterize your lasercutter’s focus, power, speed, rate, kerf, joint clearance and types.
• Document your work to the group work page and reflect on your individual page what you learned.

Lasercutter

The lasercutter is “LASER VELOCITY AQLV-400”. 40W lasercutter deveoped and manufactured by Nagoya local company. ( And that company has gone. )

Before power it up

This lasercutter is water-cooling system. By power it up, water pump also start. So, check the water level in the tank located under the table. If you see water pump sink completely, ready to go. If you find low water level and/or dirty water, trash it and fill clean tap water.

Focusing

We can access wheel that adjust Z-axis by opening a hatch on the left side of the body. To adjust focus of laser, you need to place material on honeycomb table fist. And then by turning Z-axis wheel, you can adjust focus.

THere is a console of lasercutter. You can move head by using arrow key on the console. If the head doesn’t move, press “ESC” key and try it again.

If you see two red dot, it means focus doesn’t match. To make it focusing, you need to turn wheel and put red dots to together. A picture on left side is unfocused moment, right side is focused.

PC

There is a PC next to lasercutter to control. The PC was installed control software named “LaserCut5”. This software require dongle and dongle was always pluged-in.

We can draw simple drawing with this application and LaserCut5 also be able to import DXF. You can set speed and power on each layer with this application.

Here is UI language setting on LaserCut5, but I was not able to change language setting.

When you finish drawing, you need to press “Data management” button. So that here is pop-up window.

The files shown in this windows are files on controler inside lasercutter. Since those files are used one lasttime, please erase all. (If you mind about your privacy, please erase it after using lasercutter.)

Then click “Transfer data” button, so that your drawing on LaserCut5 will be transfered to lasercutter.

Lasercutting

By pressing “Test” button on lasercutter, laser head moves and it shows which are are we doing to process. We can make sure material has enough space for cutting.

After testing, turn on the vacuum cleaner next to the lasercutter. It is connected to exaust pipe of lasercutter through water filter.

Double check coolant tap water is in enough level, material was sat proper postion, vacuum cleaner is working, then close the lid and then press “Start” button.

After processing, lasercutter beep when completed.

Finding a suitable parameter

As a trial, we used t=4mm plywood board got from free to use box. We were taught we’d better to keep the power as 50%, so I made benchmark just changing speed.

As a result, it looks speed 8 is suitable for cutting this t=4mm plywood board. Speed 6 looks a little bit strong, speed 10 looks a little bit weak.

Kerf

We cut a MDF into 10 pcs of 10mm pieces.

From the read from caliper, it was 9.05 mm. So, kerf looks (10 - 9.05) / 10 = 0.095 mm.

Press fitting test

Next, we cut press fitting tester.

By putting testing pieces from kerf test, that fit into 3.85 mm width slot. 3.80 mm slot was too tight and 3.90 mm slot was too loose.

Conclusion

For this t=4 mm MDF, Speed 8 at 50% power is suitable parameter. Kerf was 0.095 mm and cut by 3.85 mm width slot fit to this board. Please take care, these parameters are very upto the material. Even if t=4 mm MDF board, it vary depending on manufacturer and part number.