Learning to Laser Cut

A broken and dirtied lens

This week I got laser cutting certified at Stuckeman's Digifab Lab. It was interesting to use Rhino for the first time and see how it differed from Solidworks. In Solidworks, you select icons to complete different tasks. In Rhino, you can do that, but you can also type in the command at the top in a formula bar and make adjustments (like setting dimensions) through there. It felt like a combination of Excel (because of the formula bar), Solidworks, and Photoshop (because of the use of layers and different settings for each).

Clean lenses

When designing our name plates, we learned about the differences between raster, which creates an engraving, and vector, which cuts directly through the material. We also learned how to change the settings in order to be sure the laser cutter would be able to penetrate a specific type of material (i.e. loading a setting for chip board, masonite, etc.). It was also interesting to see how the laser cutter works and how to maintain it.

I look forward to using in the future!

Getting ready to load the laser cutter

The laser cutter area