Computer Controlled Cutting

Fabacademy week4 group assignment

Charactorize Fablab Kamakura’s laser cutting tool

Model : Trotec Speedy 100

Parameter
Power : 70
Speed : 1.0
Frequency : 1000Hz

Examine

First of all, we made press-fit test kit to examine proper offset for our laser cutter when cutting 3mm thickness cardboard.
press-fit test kit
The gap width starts from 3.00mm and increases 0.05mm each to finally gets to 2.55mm.
We thought that we need to pay attention to the direction of cardboard. Since it is quite hard to get hard cardboard that Neil mentioned in the lecture, we are using soft regular type of cardboard for making press-fit construction kit, and they some times collapse by their direction of joining.
Therefore, we made two types of test-kit: horizontal and vertical, as you can see in the following picture.
two way test-kit

Download test cut .ai data

Result

2.60mm fitted the most, but we decided to set our offset value to 0.45mm (which means 2.55mm in thickness), because the joints get loose as you keep assemble and diassemble.
As we assumed, the direction mattered. Vertical gap worked better, but it makes the parts weaker that easily break while assembling.

Material : Cardboard
Material thickness : 3mm
Offset value : 0.45

result1
result2

Now cutting!

cutting
Please refer to individual page.