3. Computer controlled cutting¶

Overview¶

This page shows two 2D controlled cutting projects, one with the vinyl cutter the other with the laser cutter. I made stickers with the vinyl cutter and a project to test out joints in the laser cutter.

Laser cutter documentation¶

1. How to turn on¶

Turn on Vent.

Turn on Machine.

Turn on Preasurised air.

2. Process of deisgning¶

To make the design parametric you need to add parameters. So radius of circle is the radius of the main circle. SizeOfBoard is the size of the material that I am cutting Length of stands is the length of the stands that the circle is standing on.Height of pin is the pin height of the hole that the heart goes through that is cin the pins. Size of grabbers is the slot length for the squares in the heart. DistanceToTopOfHeart is the distance to the top of the heart, the line in the middle. And the connector length is the length of the H connector hole on the front and back.

Not anything high octane yet but now we get to the new part.

So I made 3 connectors, I dont have names but i will showcase them. this one the idea was to make a bike helmet like one that you squish a bit when you slide it into the hole and it expands there and gets stuck. The other one is the H joint. Its not cool it just exists because you need to connect he previous one to something. But the last one is a big genious , the idea came to me because i wanted to make a stand. I needed legs and something to stand on those legs, but it would not be sturdy, so I created a platform aswell. So the stand legs go throught the holes in the circle and they get locked in place by the heart. The hole is just a bit bigger than the heart connector and the heart has tooths on the side for it to be hardger to get out.

So for parametric parameters I have SlotWidth which depends on the parameters MaterialThickness and Kerf. We want to make the slot size a bit smaller because the laser cuts off more material. That is why the formula for SlotWidth is (MaterialThickness - Kerf)

So for this its just a circle with hearts for the legs The heart has holes in it for bike connectors and slots on the sides

Then the legs have the top length equal to the hole size, and have a hole themselves for the heart. an exaple of parametric in the legs here we can see an exaple of parametric design, we have the distance between the holes for the legs

Also after every design I do the autoparams in fusion3d This generates constraints using ai

We can export the design as a drawing. Place everything in the correct positions Export that drawing as a PDF. Dont forget to remove lineweights Place everything where it is supposed to be , better place objects near each other to not waste material We then we go to the laser cutter.

To select the modes we click the top and bottom arrow.

To set the start position we use the jog mode. To move we use the joystick and point it towards the direction you want to move in.

You also want the laser to be focused. If the beam is too defocused, the energy density drops significantly. Lower energy density means the material might not reach the melting or vaporization point, so instead of cutting, it just heats the surface. In that case, the kerf could appear smaller or even nonexistent because the material isn’t removed. If the beam is only slightly unfocused, the spot size increases, spreading energy over a larger area. This can cause more burning or melting around the cut, widening the kerf. To do that we use the focus mode. We want to focus using the metal thing of a bob. The idea is - we want for the metall thingy to slightly touch the material we are cutting. To focus you move the joystick up and down. To set the focus position - click on the joystick.

Next put your flashdrive into the computer connected to the laser cutter. Select properties and select the mode that corresponds to the material you are cutting and the job you want to do (cut/engrave/both). When you are done click ok and send the file to the laser cutter using the print button.

There just go to the job mode and select your file by moving the joystick up and down. Then just click go on the laser cutter. Your cut has no started.

Oh no something went wrong, thats all good just click the stop button, and wait till the vector has done cutting and click the reset button.

If you cant wait for it to finish cutting the piece open the lid a bit and close it. It will stop since the machine has a priority on safety above all else.

Oh no something has went even more wrong and you need to cut the power. Click the big red button, but be aware that this might damage the laser cutter so this is almost never to be used.

After your cut is done cutting remember to wait a full minute fot the fumes to clear since they are not good for you.

And there, you are done. Wonederfully cut .

Group work¶

It did not go too well only 3 people were working and collaborating. I made friends during the group work so it was not all bad , but I will try to pick better teams in the future. I used the knowlege we gained and the doccumentation we wrote this week. I used some of the images that they took here. http://193.166.24.84:3000/DryhXLfJR-OVn4IcEqqNkQ?both

How we found the Kerf¶

To measure the kerf, we used a 50 mm reference frame and cut ten identical small pieces using the same vector settings. After cutting, we aligned all ten pieces tightly together and measured their total combined width with a caliper. The designed length was 50 mm, but the measured total was 49.5 mm. This means the laser removed 0.5 mm of material across all ten cuts. Dividing this difference by ten gives the kerf value per cut:, (50 mm − 49.5 mm) ÷ 10 = 0.05 mm. This test clearly shows that the laser removes approximately 0.05 mm of material on each side of the cut, and this value can now be used to create accurate press fit joints in next designs.

Vinyl cutting¶

Process of deisgning¶

I am a big fan of the shows produced by the indie company dropout. So i found their logo online.

I put it into inkskcape. Used the trace bitmap tool.

Here we see that it is a vector now. And export it as svg.

The process of using it¶

So take a roll of vinyl and put it on the stand behind the machine. Align the piece with the lines. Put the pinch pollers on the white grit marks. The position of the left pinch roller decides where the origin would be. The origin relative to that pinch roller for the vinyl cutter is bottom left.

Lock it with the lever.

Using the up and down arrows select the edge mode and press enter. This will find the edge and make sure non of the matterial is wasted.

. Set up the origin with the left and right arrows. And when you are happy hold the origin button till you see the origin set text appear on the display.

Not going to go on the details of how to make a vector file visit Week 2

Unlike the laser cutter for this you need an inkscape file and not a pdf. Export your drawing from inkscape to a flashdrive. Open it on the PC and click on cut.

After its done cutting unlock the vinyl with the lever and violla your sticker is done. If you have more than one piece and we need to transer everything we do a process that is called weeding. Basically we take transfer paper, stick it more or less to the vinyl then unstick the usefull parts from the vinyl and put the sticker on whatever surface that we want.