Quick Start Guide

Machine Parameters

Material Standard Size: 700 x 1000mm

Material Maximum Size: 900 x 1200mm.

Materials Safety Data Sheet: Students can bring material from other suppliers, but it must be accompanied by a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) which can be obtained from the material supplier.

Line Colours and Types

CUT: Black (RGB: 0,0,0) Vector line
ETCH: Red (RGB: 255,0,0) Vector line
RASTER: Blue (RGB: 0, 0, 255) Hatch

Minimum geometry size and bridges

The bed of the laser cutter consists of a metal tray with a 10x10mm grid of gaps; upon which material sheets are laid. Therefore any geometry with a shortest side ~10mmm or shorter in length will likely fall from through the laser cutter bed and will be lost.

There are two solutions to this:

A) Increase the size of the geometry so that it is large enough to not fall through the laser cutter bed.

B) Include ‘bridges’ or breaks in the linework of small geometry so that it stays attached to the material sheet instead of falling through. These pieces can then be cut out by hand from the sheet.

Bridges can easily be added to your geometry using the “Break” command in Rhino.
Or, if you are familiar with Grasshopper, use this simple script to quickly apply bridges to closed curves:

19KB

Bridge maker (MSD FabLab).gh

Open

A) Open 'Bridge maker.gh' with the Laser Cutting Template. Select all the relevant CUT lines, and 'Set Multiple Curves'.

B) Using the 'number slider', select how many bridges you want to generate, and the width of the bridges.

C) Right click on the 'Curves to Bake' container to 'Bake' new curves.

D) Choose the 'CUT' layer to 'Bake' new curves into the Laser Cutting Template. Ensure to delete the original CUT lines.

You can also add an etch line along the bridges to provide a guideline of where to cut out the pieces by hand.

Minimum cut line spacing

Cut line spacing refers to the minimum allowable distance between parallel lines when laser cutting.

As laser cutting requires heat (the laser) materials behave differently when being laser cut. Some materials, such as plastics will distort when too much heat is introduced. The build up of heat can also lead to fires.

The following is a list of materials and their respective MINIMUM distances between CUT lines. These distances do not apply for etching, only CUT operations.

**Please note: These settings are a BETA version and may change as we learn more. Refer back to this list before each Laser Cutting submission. Failure to adhere to these minimums will result in job cancellation.**

Material

Material Thickness

Minimum cut line spacing

MDF

3mm

Boxboard

3mm

2mm

1.8mm

1mm

Lauan Plywood

2.7mm

2.5mm

Poplar Plywood

3mm

Perspex (Acrylic)

3mm

4mm

2mm

3mm

Polypropylene

0.6mm

2mm

Mountboard

1.5mm

1mm

Optix Card

300gsm

0.5mm

Ivory Card

290gsm

0.5

Quick Start Guide

Submission and Machine

Download the Template File

Laser Cutting YouTube Playlist

Machine Parameters

Minimum geometry size and bridges

Minimum cut line spacing

Reducing Cost

NOTES

Reducing Material Use

Reducing Cutting Time