LASER CUTTER Materials For cutting and engraving: most types of wood (glues and paints can produce harmful gases), acrylic, textiles, cardboard, paper Only engraving: glass, stone, metal (with special paste), thicker wood and acryl plates Absolutely NO PVC or vinyl File formats 2D vector graphics: CDR Corel Draw native format AI Adobe Illustrator native format EPS, PDF, DXF, SVG as conversion results from other native software formats may vary (e.g. Fonts available on your computer and software are not available on our lasercutter computer), it often saves time to save in one of these interchange formats. DXF, PDF Outlines of 2d shapes from 3D modeling software later on we will also have Rhino available for projects demanding 3D modeling to operate the laser Safety tips Stay by the laser cutter while your job is being cut CHECK sure that the red light on top of the laser cutter is ON before starting a cutting job laser beam is turned off when the lid is opened this is the fastest way to stop the laser from cutting when you see it doing something strange use the Stop button if you see the laser doing something you didn't mean it to do. It will not stop the laser beam instantly for curves (opening the lid will) Emergency stop: knob on the right front side of the machine Preparing the machine and the material Turn on the ventilation system ALWAYS CHECK that the red light above the laser cutter is on before turning on the laser cutter
Turn on the laser cutter from the left side of the machine Open the lid and place your material onto the laser bed. You have a choice of either acrylic, MDF or plywood for this course. Peel off the protective cover from top of an acrylic sheet (but not bottom) Turn on the pointer red dot on the laser cutter bed will help in positioning the laser head To enable manual positioning of the laser cutter job origin coordinates, press on the laser cutter control board: -X/Y OFF -GO Open the lid and to position the red dot by moving the X and Y axes of the laser to an area where your cutting job fits (try to save cutting material by not leaving wide gaps) The position of the pointer is the TOP LEFT corner of your cutting job After positioning, press SET HOME button and then close the lid Operating the software Open one of the projects from the course folder. Make your customizations to the project keep it short, max 10 minutes. You will have opportunities to design later on other courses. You may also use the other Windows computerat the lab for editing CorelDraw files, when it's not being used to prepare 3D prints. For this exercise the design files were directly prepared with CorelDraw other vector graphics software (e.g. InkScape, Adobe
Illustrator) can also be used to prepare your designs, to be imported to and edited to be suitable for laser cutting with Corel Draw. Save your modified design on the course folder under STUDENTS use your name in the filename. Also save a copy for yourself transfer with an USB stick or email the file to yourself. CUTTING through the material: lines with width hairline (lines less than 0.1 mm thick) ENGRAVING: any filled areas and lines thicker than 0.1 mm) For other applications such as designing snapfit 3d-structures built out of 2d-shapes it might be more convenient to operate the laser cutter from the 3d software, but the process is a little more complex than is necessary for simple cutting and engraving jobs for 2d-only objects. We will likely make this option available by the next course for more advanced designs. Choose the piece to be cut This will be handy in bigger projects on the same file or with multiple parts, where you might not want to cut out all of them at the same time or with the same material or laser cutter settings.
Go to File-Print or click Ctrl-P to open laser cutter driver settings. Epilog lasercutters come with printer drivers (for Windows only) and are operated as printers by the operating system. They are also network-enabled - you will be able to use the other Windows computer at the lab for preparing and sending jobs to the laser later on. Make sure the Print range setting is set to Selection Click on the Layout tab Make sure the Reposition images to: is set to Top left corner. Using this setting ensures the design will be cut precisely where you positioned the red dot on the laser. Operating the laser like this will help our lab to save our cutting sheet material, when cutting jobs can be placed precisely on unused areas of the material without wasting material. Other positioning settings may be used in case your later designs require it, and will be covered by request on later lasering sessions. Click back to the General tab and click on Preferences to prepare the materialdependent settings
Recommended settings for the materials used on this course: MDF Engraving Cutting 600DPI 100/40 (speed/power) 30/60/500 (speed/power/frequency) Plywood Engraving Cutting 600DPI 100/40 22/100/500 1200DPI 100/30 30/60/5000 Acrylic Engraving More settings can be found on the text file on the desktop. For new materials a test piece will need to be cut to check for settings that work on that material (without the material bursting into flames and for it to be cut all the way through) Prepare the ENGRAVING settings for your material Prepare the CUTTING settings for your material Rule of thumb: frequency should be 5000Hz for materials that melt (plastics), 500Hz for materials that burn (wood, cardboard, paper)
Resolution much like with a regular printer, the resolution will determine how many dots per inch your engraved areas will have. For wood, cardboard and other non-smooth materials you can usually get by with 600DPI. Smoother surfaces such as acrylic might require the maximum 1200DPI to look even. Rule of thumb: use the least DPI possible, 300DPI is twice as fast as 600DPI to engrave Auto Focus: laser focuses automatically before each cut. This is the safest setting for shared laser use. Focusing on the laser will be covered on demand. Job Type: Raster = only engraving Vector = only cutting Combined = both engraving and cutting Vector sorting: inside out guarantees smaller pieces in the middle of the job get cut out first, outline last, so laser focus is optimal. Click OK when you are satisfied with the settings (check with the instructor if you are unsure) Back on the General tab, Click on the Print button Your job should now appear as the latest job on the lasercutter job list, identifiable by its filename. You can use the UP and DOWN arrows on the laser cutter control panel to locate your laser cutting job on the laser job queue. It's identified by the filename. Press the green GO button on the laser cutter control panel to start
STAY BY THE LASER CUTTER while engraving and cutting are going on Don't watch directly at the beam for too long this may damage your eyes.