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WEEK 3

COMPUTER CONTROLLED CUTTING



GROUP TASK



This week I have worked with Ana on the group assignment which you can view HERE



VINYL CUTTER

In our FAB LAB we have GCC 24 PRO vinyl cutter. I used it before on the open days for cutting textile vinyl patterns and heat pressing them on jumpers. This time I wanted to try new type of vinyl.

I was experimenting with thick vinyl (with fluffy texture) and I tried to work with 2 colours – one for outline and one for the fill colour.

PREPARING THE FILES

The vinyl cutter reads .pdf format. I usually first draw by hand, than import to Adobe Illustrator to trace it into a vector drawing.







I struggled a lot with the knife until I realised you can change the cutters with different angles. For thicker vinyl I should use another type of knife. I did few tests with a heat press sticking different types of vinyl on top of each other.





I also used gold vinyl and tried the transport tape to move it onto a piece of paper.



ORYGINAL FILES

AESOP OUTLINE
AESOP FILL

Later on I also made a jumper to promote Fab Academy at Fab Lab Spinderihallerne. This is how it turned out. If you would like to order one for yourself please e-mail me at olamirecka@gmail.com






LASER CUTTER

When you cut anything on the laser you have to adjust the settings. The settings can change overtime so you always have to adapt them. The most difficult is the cardboard. For cutting Acrylic and MDF usually the default settings are ok but it is always good to run a test.

PREPARING THE FILES

Laser reads PDF files.
For the cut line has to be 0.001 thick and RED=255, GREEN=0, BLUE=0
For the engraving is usually 100% Black RED=0, GREEN=0, BLUE=0

First I have focused on developing a good joint that would hold the pieces together without glue. From the group assignment I learned what is the best dimension for the MDF. I did the drawing of the elements in Fusion 360. Still finding it a little hard to make constraigns in the way that the parametric design works for me.




PARAMETRIC DESIGN

Great thing about using Fusion 360 is that your designs can be parametric. If you add good constraints you are able to modify and change dimentions in many places at the same time. Parametric design is a paradigm in design where the relationship between elements is used to manipulate and inform the design of complex geometries and structures.



ORYGINAL FILES PDF

CIRCLE
SHAPES
FINGER

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Laser cutter is a great tool for quick prototyping. I would like to use practice using it more, with different materials. I don't like the burned finnish on the wood.

From practical info I also learned how to clean the laser. It gets dirty from the material dust. It is important to clean it often so the laser beam can be reflected in the right direction.











Creative Commons Licence
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me at OLAMIRECKA@GMAIL.COM