LASER CUTTING

In the second week of CP5070, my group members and I were tasked to do a parametric design using the laser cutter. We had to do Stanard Operating Procedures (SOP) 24 hours before the practical day which we did in a table format and printed out and brought on the day of the practical which we used during the individual competency test which I had to operate the laser cutter and laser cut out a small rectangle with the word "test" engraved on it.

As much as the SOP that I and my group members did was helpful, it was definitely the bare minimum for an SOP and there definitely could have been improvements and changes done for it to have been up to a good standard. 

Hence I took the time to change and improve my group's SOP. The first change was obvious to all of us and that the font size was too big and the information wasn't easily accessible due to having to flip the pages.

the page where another half of "safety" was at another page which needed to be flipped for access

same page after SOP improvement where everything under "Safety" and "procedures" is on one page 

Another change to the SOP that I did was to the shutdown procedures which was written in the wrong order.

before

after

The next change was to add images under certain steps for references.

before

after

Besides, adding other minor steps that made the SOP look less vague was all the changes I did to improve my SOP.

For the competency test that was done, I was just tasked to operate the laser cutter which was simple. The first few steps were the startup which was in my SOP (the image above). Turning on the air compressor, followed by turning on the fume extractor and finally turning don't the main laser cutter and waiting for the initialisation to be finished. Next was to proceed to the computer and open the CorelDraw 64bit, which looks like the icon below.

I made a mistake at first and click on the wrong CorelDraw icon as there were two, one that is 64bit and the other wasn't 64bit. For laser cutting, we had to use the 64bit one as we were told so that was something I was corrected by the teacher-in-charged who tested me during the competency test and which I had to take a mental note on.

Next was to import, by pressing "ctrl" and "i", one out of the four DXF files that were used for the competency test in the computer. 

After the import, I had to set the line weight to, hairline, followed by setting the outline of the test cut, by double-clicking on "Outline Color", to red by changing the numbers RED GREEN BLUE to 255 0 0 respectively. As well as filling the engraving which was "TEST" to green by double-clicking "Fill Color" and changing the numbers of RED GREEN BLUE to 0 255 0 respectively.

found at the bottom right of the software

After finishing the vector and engraving I press "ctrl-p" and click on "print" which brings me to a new software tab. The next step is to turn on "auto focus" to "Thickness".

The next steps are to turn on "air assist" as well as to set the "speed", "power" and "frequency" to 12, 90, 90 respectively. Process type is dependent on whether it's an engraving or vector.

Steps in the SOP

Next was to click on the folder icon at the top right of the small box for each process to import the material that I used for the laser cut, which was acrylic 3mm.

After the steps are repeated for both the engraving and vector I proceeded to click on "Print" at the bottom right of the software. 

Next was carefully opening up the laser cutter screen to place the acrylic sheet at the top left of the laser cutter and close it back down carefully.

By the time I was done with placing the material, the file name of my competency test run was on the LCD screen of the laser cutter and I pressed the button "GO" for the cutting to start.

After the machine was done cutting I waited for about 30 seconds and opened the cover and shake the piece first to make sure the laser has cut through the material. Followed by my small piece from the competency test out.

SOP for steps above

Competency test piece

Next was laser cutting the parametric designs that I and my group members had designed. After we had all done our competency test I and my group members were all just ready to laser cut our parametric design as we were ready and thought that we had done our work. However, when we did our first laser print it was a failure as the slots were too small and could fit. Hence when we tried to connect two pieces together, it didn't work and one of the rectangles even broke which can be seen at the bottom picture.

After our first failure which we didn't consider the thickness of material which was 3mm we had to change our dimension which was relatively easy because we used parametric. However, even for the 2nd try we still failed as we overestimated the kerf and the slots were too loose hence we had to redo our laser cutting another time.

However, we had no time left to do our third laser cut and our group was contemplating whether to come back once more the next day, Friday, to do a final print to get a successful laser cut. So on Friday I and the other Danial came back and we changed the dimensions once more and this time we sure 3.3mm wood for our material to laser cut. Finally, we got a successful print with no errors and could construct our desired products using our parametric designs.

 

After all these ups and downs we finally got our parametric designs to work and there was a lot of things I've learned from these experience. First was obvious how to operate the laser cutter as well as the potential hazards to watch out for. Next was considering kerf which we were supposed to add to our desired thickness for a good fit.  More personally having tried using a laser cutter was definitely more different from a 3D printer which I had tried using before, in a sense that it felt faster than a 3D printer and slightly more complicated to use. So I most definitely would be looking forward to laser cutting more in the future and learning about the up-and-coming 3D print session in this module.

small token I got from the 3D printing company

Reflection

Looking back at this practical I've gained new skills, such as operating Coreldraw and EPILOG FUSIONPRO. Which are used for laser cutting as well as the operation of the laser cutter which is by far the most interesting thing I've learnt for this week. I aced the competency test in the FABLAB and of course the final pencil holder which was very fulfilling to succeed after multiple attempts and failrues.