Marco Bianchi - Computer-Controlled Cutting

This week we have been working with cutting machines.
First we tested the vynil cutter, then we created a press fit kit with laser cutting. The kit should allow you to create different objects using the pieces of the kit. The pieces must fit together witout using glue, nails or screws.

Vynil Cutter

I started working with Vinyl Cutter.
Our machine is a Silhouette Cameo, the machine features a dual-carriage so you can use two tools at once, and cut over than 100 materials. First of all i've installed Silhouette studio, the software that comes with the machine specifically designed to handle the machine settings and the cut, then i choose a image from demo gallery to test the machine for the first time. Once I finished cutting I removed the excess vinyl and, using the application tape I stuck the sticker on my laptop.

After vinle I made several cutting trials to test the car and the different materials.

Laser Cutting And Pressfit

To continue working on my final project I took advantage of the Pressfit kit design to create the legs of my table. I started to work with Freecad but to the easiest way to prepare the file for our machine was made it with Inkscape, so i finish it with Inkscape. To use Inkscape as parametric programm i follow this tutorial

Our FabLab has available a CO2 laser with 100 watts of power.
The working area is 2500mm (y) * 1250mm (x), the maximum cutting thickness is 10mm.
To cut we used LaserWork v6.

After cutting i made a lot of mistake both in design and in the cut. First of all exporting my work from inkscape to Autocad create problem with dimension.
My work was made usising millimeter as unit of measure but cad read it like it was made using pixel.
To do the cut i scaled the file but the final result was not precise as hoped. Even the choise of plywood wasn't a good choise. The plywood i bought was curved and It made it very difficult to cut.