The task was to vinil cutter something. In my case I did the logo of the Fablab for my computer. First I have the logo opened in Illustrator and the vector outer-lines.After that I send it to the machine to cut it.

You have to have a DXF file but the lines have to be expanded and not double line. The thickness has to be minimum and then you are ready to cut it.

The Force I have used is 80grams

I tried to make a sweater of Fablab with the same logo but different material.

The Force I have used for this one is 190grams

This is an activity group where we have laser cut different materials in order to see which is the amount of material that we lose when cutting with the laser.

Have a DXF file/Calculate the thickness of the material and place it on the bed/ Calibrate the distance between the material and the nozzle, it has to be 12 mm and we use the wooden tool to do so/ Check to settings of speed and power and download them from the computer to the machine/ /Place the 0 starting point and TEST to see if the file feets in the material/ Open the VACUM and START job.

First of all we have check the height of the bed is correct one but we had to change it as it was not perfect.

Once we have checked that the bed of the laser is in the good position we can start cutting the different materials.

In Illustrator we have draw a clip to laser cut it and the resoult is the following. It is not perfecty how we wanted but it, so it can be improved.

Conclusion: When it comes to acrylic, the thicker the material, the less kerf. For some reason we assumed it would be the other way around but we have the proof now. A nice surprise was a flexible PTFE material that didn’t cut all the way through which gave a flexible structure, could come in useful someday.

We didn't reached to cut throught the matterials so we had to repeat and change the settings.

First I have designed the shape of the modul I wanted in Free Cad. I have choose a parametric design program in order that I can adapt easy the design to different materials. In my case I have varyied from 2mm to 3mm. Before exporting the file in dxf you must export it as a (svg) file as Free Cad doesn't allaw so. Once you have export it you can open it and save it in (dxf)to be ready for the laser cutter.

Here we will change the parameters we want to change.

The first material is carboard of 3 mm thickness. While the second is 2mm acrylic.

The settings I have used to laser cut the CARDBOARD of 3mm thickness are; SPEED: 100 and POWER:70.

This is the kit I have designed. You can see in detail the two different moduls.

To cut the ACRYLIC 2mm thick I have used a POWER of 100 and SPEED of 30.

First I was working with this first image but then I realized that the corners where not curved so I had to change the design.