My Digital Making Journey- Original Tutorials and Reflection: Tutorial 2: Laser Cutting and Constructing the Model

Once the colours and line weights have been corrected in in Adobe Illustrator they can be sent through to the printer immediately. The laser cutting program allows you to adjust the setting for the cutting process:

NOTES:
1. Each sheet must been done individually
2. The sheet sizes for the laser cutting are always 600x300mm (this process is done in 123D Make)
3. When setting up a job the laser must be focused to the correct height, as each job may be using a varying thickness of material. (this is done with a simple focusing tool, which adjusts the distance of the laser to the material surface consistently. (if this isn't done the laser may confuse itself as to how deep the cut should actually be)
4. In the printing setting make sure to change the material matte board
5. Make sure to change the cutting depth to around 0.50 below the thickness of the material being used, for example i used 2mm board and i had my cut set to 2.5mm
6. Use the positioning tool located in the right hand menu bar to position the laser, ensuring each corner of the Ai. file is the same as the laser cutter position.
7. Turn the induction of before printing
8. Shut the lid of the laser cutter




The following steps are for the laser cutting process:

Opening up my PDF file on the Laser cutting computers and then importing them into Illustrator:

Editing line colours and light weights depending the depth of the cut

Red for a full cut

Blue as a 0.001mm cut for labeling and position indicating lines

Sending the Ai. to the printer application FILE>PRINT.

Opening the Laser cutter printer application

Setting the material to Matte board and a cutting depth of 2.50mm

Turning on the Laser cutter

Adjusting the focus point of the laser cutter using the focusing tool

Positioning the board on the laser cutting bed and using the computer program to position the laser and the edges of the sheet so that all pieces of the cut will be within the sheet. (i did this by ensuring all corners of the sheet were within the lasers range.

Shut the lid

Turn on the extractors

Press play.

The average sheet cutting time was around 12 minutes

Repeat this process for each sheet.

Make sure to keep track and collect all pieces as some can be quite small.

This image is of the Laser cutter in the process of cutting out my pieces

These are all of my pieces once they had been finished.

For this process i would suggest having someone with you who has been through the process before, it is quite a simple thing to operate once you have an understanding of how it works and the settings it requires, yet it still takes a few attempts to grasp.

I was really happy with the results that the laser cutter produced for me, it is satisfyingly accurate. being able to understand and operate these machines has already helped me substantially within my other work. this subject has been extremely beneficial in gaining a stronger understanding of a wide range of tools that i otherwise would not have had access to.

The next stage of this process is to build the model layer by layer.

Start  by organizing the pieces into groups of 10: 1-10, 11-20, 21-30 and so on.... to 160-175

Starting with layer 1,use fishing line to tie through the alignment holes. A technique i hoped would help keep the model inline but started to become to difficult as the model layers grew and the glue started drying.

Threading and placing the next on top of it and gluing it down as i go. This method can be quite time consuming, i did end up scrapping it all together later on.

The most effective way to do this process is line each of the wholes up by eye and use the scolded lines provided to align each edge. I found that even with the fishing line the pieces would not always be inline as the material naturally has a bit of movement.

  

It wasn't until i reached the curved and twisted nature of the top section, that the alignment technique using the fishing line began to impede the object. Many of the holes failed to line up correctly, and subsequently i scrapped this idea and began aligning the layers by hand, many of which had markings on them to support this process. As a result it became much faster to construct.

In the end i was reasonably happy with the result, my model was not exactly as i a had envisioned it from the beginning but none the less i was pleased with the outcome. The spiral section of the object gradually began to lean away from the centre of the item. Although i think this adds a bit of character to the object, but it is not how i intended it to occur. This process took about 4 hours of meticulous concentration and around 24 hours to completely dry.

For this process i would recommend speeding it up from the beginning and aligning each piece by the holes and edgings, the use of fishing line effectively did nothing to improve accuracy and slowed the process down considerably.

The only tools you will require is wood glue and a semi-wet cloth

The next step is to begin forming our metal skin.