Group Assignment:

Calibrate Laser and mesure kerf

Before starting to cut the kit we designed this week, we had to find the best setting for our Laser-cutting machine. The machine is a Trotec Speedy 400 Flexx, it has a working area of 1000 x 610 mm and 2 type of laser: 120W CO2 and 50W Fiber.

To calculate the optimal settings to cut our 5.7mm thick plywood we made a test matrix.

You can barely see the small 10 x 10 mm square because the cutting line thickness is 0,001mm

We started from the Trotec suggested setting and tried to play around them to find the cut with the less amount of kerf.

On one axis of the matrix we varied the velocity and on the other one the speed.

In the end we found out that the 80% power and 0.4% speed was the best cut.

The values on the table above are measured with a caliper.

The resulting table

As you can see on the lower part of the table the laser did not cut through.

To check the results stated above we designed a 10 x 10mm square hole and some “keys” to test the press-fit.

We found out that 0.2mm kerf ( 10.40 tab ) was good but not really strong, the perfect one was 10.45 so 0.225mm kerf.

LaserCut Maintenance

Before cutting the final kit we cleaned the laser lenses; we used industrial optical cleaner liquid: we placed few drops on the lens and waited for about 2 mins, after we wiped off the liquid with a moist cleaning cloth.

Here’s a good video tutorial: Link to YouTube