Fab Academy 2016 @Barcelona

Laser Cutting Tutorial

  • Safety Rules

    • 1. Cleaning of lens
    • Do not stare laser for a long time
    • Laser cutter must remain under constant supervision while in use

      • The machine could be suddenly overheated and start a fire. Make sure to set "Air Assist" mode. Make sure that machine is under your control.

  • How to measure with a caliber?


  • From Inkscape to Lasercutting
    • tutorial
  • Operation
    • general   color mapping
    Vector (line/arc), Raster (image), or combined
    Frequency, power and speed
    Duis sed odio sit amet nibh vulputate cursus a sit amet mauris. Morbi accumsan ipsum velit. Nam nec tellus a odio tincidunt auctor a ornare odio.

    Leave a Comment

    For Starter -
    Principles and Practices,
    Project Management

    Tags

    Reference



    Exercise - Soccer Ball

    statue

    I have been always curious about the feature of soccer ball - its planar feature, vertices, edges, 3 and dimensional angle etc. It is obviously an interesting solid.
    Now it is time to discover it!

    Planar Figure

    At first, I tried to look through its planar feature. To do this, I drew its planary figure with Inkscape. Soccer ball is comprised of 12 Pentagons and 20 Hexagons. Here, I missed some pentagons and hexagons. I intended to set the outlines as cutting and intersected lines as engraving, but it did not work so well. One main reason was our laser cutter did not function well - sometimes power is higher/lower than it should be.

    However, it was a great trial in that I was able to practice how to operate laser cutter. Also, it was absolutely helpful to understand the 3D figure of soccer ball while I assembled the fragmented pentagons and hexagons with tape. I called it as my rapid prototyping (though it was not so rapid). Now it is time to think about how to make a joint and 'really' assemble the model.


    Concept

    C60 gave me an idea. If we look at the Buckminsterfullerene (a spherical fullerene molecule with the formula C60), it has a structure with a carbon atom at each vertex of each polygon and a bond along each polygon edge. The double bonds of below picture inspired me. How about applying the concept of covalent Bond to desgin joints? How about making each carbon in pentagon as 'electron-donor'?

    Redesign and Lasercutting

    practice2.0   practice2.1

    Asssembling

    assembling1   assembling2

    Joints

    Pentagon as bolts; Hexagon as nuts
    pentagon   hexagone

    Before and After

    Yes, I made it!
    It was not just a ball.
    It was a nature; it was a simple and beatiful solid.

    before   after

    Lessons

    1. Rapid prototyiping helps a lot. It inspires you to take a further step.
    2. Making something takes much more time.
    3. Start fast and fail fast.
    4. Nature is a great source of inspiration.
    5. You could truly undertand an object only when you disassemble or assemble it.
    6. You'd better try both.

    Further Study

    1. The Last Piece Problem
      2. thelast
      I had no choice but to break a joint while I assembled the last piece.
      Is there any other way to solve "the last joint problem"?

    2. 3D -> 2D -> 3D with Blender
      3. Ferdi told me Blender has a function which converts a 3D figure into a 2D planar figure. So in theory, we can obtain a 2D planar figure with Blender (3D -> 2D) and build a 3D figure with laser cutted 2D figure (2D -> 3D). It would be an interesting double conversions process.

    3. The Solid Angle
      4. Still, there is one thing that I want to figure out - the solid angle between hexagon and pentagon. Once I saw a big soccer ball sculpture, I thought, maybe I could apply 'projection' principle to solve this 'problem'. Now, I can prboably measure the angle with rhinoceros. How about trying both and comparing them?

    4. Grains in Materials

      5. Most materials are composed of thousands or millions of grains. If a material is a crystal, its grains are well-aligned with each other. If we heat the material grain sizes are changed and its alignments are distorted.

    5. City as a Cell; City as a Material
      6. 'City as a Cell' seems to be a common analogy in Urban Study. As I know it is not so stupid idea, it could be a good start point. How about rethinking a city as a cell? How about rethinking a city as a material? How about rethinking risks in city with this analogy frame? How can I interpret grains, grain boundaries, grain sizes, cracks, fracutures, crystal, and amorphous then? Maybe I could come up with some useful concepts from this.