September 22, 2021

Week 2:
Vinyl & Laser Cutting

Vinyl cutting was easy, but I really struggled with designing in laser cutting

Important Data:
Besting press fit joint cut width: 3.9-4.1 mm (all you need for parametric)
Laser Kerf: ~0.28 mm (you need this if precision cutting is necessary)
To cut through: 100% power, 10% speed, 1000 ppi
To score one side: 25% power, 10% speed, 1000 ppi
Vinyl: F = 50 g, speed = 2 cm/s

To cut my "ultralight" in vinyl, I simply typped up the words in Windows Painting and output it as a small .png file. After pulling it up in MODs and hit go on the vinyl cutter, here's my little success!

But I decided to make my life complicated by designing and assemble a little sailboat with laser cutting. First, I drew up a model in solid work by loft extrusion. After having my model, I can then slice the model latitudinally and longitudinally to genertated the pieces I needed. But the complication came up when I was trying to generate the side panel for the sailboat. The extrusion and flattening the surface of a desirable side panel seems to take forever. I then discovered that I have no good way to mount/press fit the side panel onto the frame of my sailboat model either... very sad :(

Today I Learned:

Forming a complex curve and trying to cut it out on laser cutter difficult, might try more later on...