(Avinash, Marie, and Mikaela)

This week, our assignment was to use the laser cutter to cut wood into two-dimensional figures using the OEDK’s laser cutter and Engrave Lab. Our group received files in .PDF format for clock pieces that we needed to convert into cuttable format on the OEDK lab computers; these pieces would then be combined with the pieces cut by the rest of the class to make a single, functioning clock.

Our first attempts at laser cutting were slightly delayed because the laser cutter was using a new lens. We aren’t entirely sure about the details, but, from what we gathered, the laser cutter formerly used a 2.0 lens and now uses a 4.0 lens. The newer lens allows the laser to have greater focus, giving it more cutting power–Carlos said that it had been used to cut through half-inch ply. Naturally, this was much stronger than the power we needed to cut our pieces, which were from quarter-inch sheets of wood, so we had to adjust the power and speed accordingly. We were unable to cut any of our clock pieces during our first session of cutting.

When we returned for our second session, we were able to begin cutting the clock pieces. We once again tested for the proper speed and power cut functions, although we had difficulties settling on the proper settings. We ultimately cut seven different copies of our gears while testing for speed and power before we settled on a 19 speed, 36 power setting that allowed us to cut all the way through the wood without burning the edges too badly. The seven gears in their varying shades of crisp-ness are shown below.

After finally settling on suitable speed/power settings, cutting the rest of our pieces was relatively straightforward. We found that the laser cutter traced out the gear teeth in an unusual manner–rather than tracing through the entire gear in a single stroke, the laser cutter would cut each individual tooth out, sometimes cutting two or three teeth on one side, crossing to the opposite half of the, and then returning to trace out some more teeth on the initial side. This lack of a continuous cutting stroke made it difficult for some gears to be removed from the wood after cutting was complete.

One of the medium-sized gears, shown above, was particularly difficult to remove from the wood. We attempted running two passes with the laser cutter, although this only badly scorched the wood and failed to cut all the way through each individual tooth, still.

Eventually, although we were able to punch the gear out of place, the edges were very messy, although we were able to clean them off using a utility knife.

It should also be noted that the large spacers, shown below, were intended to be cut from eighth-inch ply, while some of the smaller gears were meant to be cut from half-inch ply. Because half-inch ply is very difficult to cut through, we decided to cut two identical pieces from quarter-inch ply; these two pieces could then be used end-to-end to serve as a half-inch piece. However, we had no way to simulate eighth-inch ply, as the smallest thickness of wood available for the laser cutter was quarter-inch ply. We ultimately decided to cut these spacers, shown below (the large, round piece, center), out of quarter-ply. with the hopes that they could later be cut in half or that their extra size would have minimal impact on the overall clock.

Our final product is shown below:

Also shown is a (small sample) of our assorted failures in cutting: