Laser Cutting

For this entry, I would mainly be covering my process of laser cutting and my own experience with it.

Firstly, after going through the practical itself we made some minor changes to the Standard Operating Procedure but mainly it is on the operation of Corel-Draw. Some improvements made are as shown below in Figure 1, we specified the speed, power, and frequency for the two different types of cuts (Vector and Engrave) however the parameters there can be changed according to your needs. 

Figure 1: Standard Operating Procedure

For instance, if you wish for a better vector cut you can choose a lower speed with high power so that the material being laser cut would have a clean cut and the component that you cut would drop out easily after cutting.

For engraving, a normal combination would be a high speed accompanied with a low power cut as the engraving is only done on the surface of the material thus the speed can be higher but the power must be lower so that it does not cut through the material itself.

Operation of laser cutting:

1. Firstly, start up the compressor, fume extractor, and laser cutter machine.
2. Launch CorelDraw on the computer.
3. Import DXF file design to CorelDraw.
4. Select the design for vector cut and engraving respectively. Vector cut using (Red, Hairline) and Engraving using (Green)
5. Duplicate the design according to your needs after specifying the settings in Step 4.
6. Press print option at the top ribbon / Ctrl-P.
7. On the Epilog dashboard (right-hand side), turn on auto-focus and air assist.
8. For each object, import the material used and specify the thickness of the material used for vector cut.
9. Click on Print to send the file to the laser cutter.
10. Check the file name and estimated time it will take to cut.
11. Press the GO button to begin cutting
12. Wait for 1 minute before taking out the laser-cut product.

Shown below here is the footage of the laser cutting machine in operation, along with the finished pieces that were being cut out.

Figure 2: Laser Cutting Video

This piece below is the acrylic I tried to laser cut out during the Individual Competency Assessment. 

Figure 3: Individual Competency Piece

This spaceship looking thing is what we have assembled with the parametric construction kit

Figure 4: Parametric Construction Kit

Reflection

After going through the laser cutting practical, I would say that other than having learned a new skill of laser cutting I also enjoyed the process of doing it as we were not really restricted much and there was a lot of space/things to play with. 

Like most of the practicals I have, mistakes are inevitable and these mistakes are always valuable as they give us key learning points that we should take note of and prevent in the future. Some notable mistakes that happened during the practical is when my group tried to import the DXF file into CorelDraw it was harder to adjust the components there as it was packed with a few designs and instead we tried to adjust the sketch on Fusion360 first and create individual DXF file based on each component and that made it much easier to adjust in CorelDraw. 

To sum up, if possible, in the near future I would try to incorporate laser cutting into my future prototypes/designs that I would make for the other projects as laser cutting is really versatile in my opinion and a lot can be done with it if you used it properly so I would definitely consider using it again, maybe even book the FabLab when I am free so I can make use of the machine again to try cutting out other designs that I have in mind or would like to try out.

Below here is the Fusion360 Design that the group has done for the parametric construction kit.