First I got a 3 mm sheet of wood from the Engi 210 table. The piece of wood I chose had a slight bow to it, so I used two weights to help correct it and make sure it would lay flat against the laser cutter’s bed. Once I did that, I focused it using the metal attachment for the Epilog Fusion M2. I made sure that the attachment was barely scratching the surface of the wood pressing down.
Once the Fusion M2 was set up, I decided to cut the 1D and 2D hinges from the prototyping library. For my first cut, I decided to follow the instructions posted on the wall for vector cuts, but for my first trial, I didn’t realize that the wood I was using was much softer and lighter than the wood used for the vector cuts described on the wall. My first cut of the 1D hinge was too burnt and the wood was blackened and I wasn’t satisfied with the results. Also, I was unsatisfied with the rastering using the 40 Power and Speed setting, because I wanted a deeper darker engraving.
Instead of wasting my time and the wood cutting large pieces of wood out, I decided to make a bunch of small boxes testing the speed of the vector cut to see how fast I could manipulate the laser cutter and still be able to cut through the material. I decided on 10-speed for the vector cuts after a few tests, but once I tried it out on the box it was too fast and didn’t cut all the way through properly and broke with the removal of the hinge from the wood. Also, I tried a new raster setting of 80 power and 40 speed and liked the look of the engraving more.
After this test trial, I turned down the speed to 8-speed to make it go a bit slower to cut through more, but not slow enough to where it was burning the wood like my first test trial. Finally, I created two identical pieces for my 1D hinge.
After that, I decided to keep with hinges because I liked the way they tuned out and wanted to have a multi-directional hinge. For this hinge, I decided to change the rastering settings a bit more, because I wanted to experiment. I chose a power setting of 60 and a speed setting of 40 because I wanted to try a little bit of light engraving. However, the 2D hinge is much more fragile than the 1D Hinge I had to be much more careful in the process of removing it from the wood otherwise it would snap at the hinge and be defective. Once I got down the technique of removing it slowly I got two identical pieces of the 2D Hinge.
For the cost analysis of the hinge, I would charge an hourly rate of $20/hr for the design and fabrication of the wood. The project took me an estimated 3 hours to complete, because of a couple setbacks like the wood being burnt or broken. Also, test trials of small cuts of wood to get the settings right on the laser cutter to make sure it is satisfactory and how I want it to appear. For the cost of materials, the sheet of wood was provided to me for free by the OEDK. The hinges overall would cost $60 to produce.
