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Laser & Vinyl Cutting

Laser cut test     Parametric kit     Vinyl cutting

Laser cut test

Group work with Xdd

We used 1/8" acrylic sheet for this assignment, cut at Building 3 Arch shop's 75W Epilog lasercutter.

The lasercutter supports setting of power, speed, and frequency. The suggested setting of our material from Arch shop is 20 speed, 60 power, 5000 frequency. Therefore, we applied the 20 speed and 5000 frequency, and varied the power value to find the actual suitable setting.

We used color mapping to cut circles with different power at once. We varied the power from 50 to 70 in the first round, and all cut through. Therefore, we performed the second round with power from 47 down to 25.

The second test round: a gradient of blue to map 25 - 47 power to circles, and red to score the annotations.

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The second test round

a gradient of blue to map 25 - 47 power to circles, and red to score the annotations.

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Power test result

We found out the circle is barely detachable at power = 35, while it didn't cut through at power <= 32. Therefore, 35 - 40 is pretty much enough power.

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Simple joint test

Next, we designed a simple joint to test the kerf clearance. We offset the joint cutting lines from -0.020 inches to +0.015 inches.

Clearance test cutting lines. Blue denotes cutting line, black denotes original lines, and red is annotation scoring.

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Joint test result

We cut them out and tried to join them. The joints with -0.020 to 0.000 offsets turned out to be loose. The pair with +0.005 offset provided comfortable friction. The pair with +0.010 offset cannot be joined with bare hand, but I hammered them together. The pair with +0.015 offset cannot be joined at all. Therefore, the kerf is about 0.005 inches thick.

Vinyl Cutting

step 1

Preparing your png file

600 ppi minimum

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step 2

Get ready to cut it

Calculate the png file and send it to the cutting machine

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step 3

Remove after the cutting

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step 4

Sticking it on the object

Use a paper stick to assist in removing the pattern. Never remove the whole thing first and stick each piece separately.

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step 5

Gently remove the sticker

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step 6

Done!!

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Project Index

W5: electronics design

W6: electronics production

W7: molding and casting

W8: input devices

W9: computer-controlled machining

W10: computer-controlled machining

W11: output devices

W12: networking & communications

W13: interface & application 

W14: wildcard week

W15: final project

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