For our lab this week, we were tasked with laser cutting the Rice War Owl. We had to experiment with settings on the laser cutter to find out what worked best, and we went through several iterations until we finally made it to the best design.
To begin, we dowloaded the file off of Canvas and made a few edits. We had to remove the borders of each portion and make the outline a cut rather than an etch. In addition, we decreased the size of the owl to reduce the amount of wood we had to use and the time it would take to cut it out.
We used the color masking feature to program different speeds and powers for each color in the owl. We got the RBG code from the color fill and typed that into the color mask preferences. Then we were able to assign a unique power and speed. In our first few iterations, we had lots of trouble because the colors were too similar that you couldn’t see a contrast, especially between the grey and yellow.
Color mapping screen
Our first full cut was really charred, as shown to the left. We continued to have
problems with incorrect coloring, so we decided to make a small color swatch to see if we could get a better contrast. Eventually, we came to find the best combination of speed and power. We ended up setting all of the speeds to 100 and then cutting at varying powers (60 for blue, 20 for grey and 10 for yellow). This left a nice look that wasn’t too charred. In addition, we lowered the resolution and got a checkered pattern. While we attempted to fix this to get a more even colored surface, we ultimately determined that it made the contrast greater and that we would leave it.
Overall, it was a bit frustrating to try to find the best combinations of speed and power, we learned that the best way to do it is to make several small swatches and decide which is best from there. It eliminates wasteful use of material and time. I only wish we would have realized that sooner and not wasted so much time on making full sized owls that didn’t meet our standards.
Final Design
Check out a time lapse video of the laser cutter in action!
