Rotary Adapter Arrived

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Paul Williamson

We now have the rotary adapter for the laser at Colab. This enables us to engrave on cylindrical objects, including tapered cylinders such as beer glasses.

I’ll update here when I’ve tested it out. If you have an urgent job that needs the rotary adapter, let me know and we’ll try it out together.

Rotary adapter for engraving cylindrical objects on the laser.

CorelDraw X7 Installed

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Paul Williamson

We now have CorelDraw Graphics Suite X7 installed on the Colaser computer. It’s a very full-featured vector drawing program, and it also comes with Photo-Paint (a bitmap editing program), PowerTrace (for converting bitmaps to vector), and a bunch of other stuff.

If you’re still trying to decide what vector drawing package to learn, CorelDraw is a reasonable choice. You can get the Home & Student edition for about $130. We have the full version at Colab, since it supports more import file formats you might want to use, but for original drawings the Home & Student version is probably fine.

Laser Scheduling

Posted on September 14, 2014 by Paul Williamson

Now that we have some people trained and checked out on the laser, we need a scheduling mechanism to reserve time on the laser. Eventually this should be automated and easy, but for now Meg <meggieking@gmail.com> has agreed to handle the scheduling manually. Please contact Meg to arrange time on the laser.

Between now and YouTopia, priority will be given to people working on the Temple and art projects for YouTopia. If you have other projects, let Meg know and she will still try to find a timeslot for you.

Laser Classes

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Paul Williamson

Training classes to use the laser will be held at Colab on Sunday, September 14 beginning at noon, and again on Thursday, September 18 at 7pm. These two sessions may already be full; if you need to laser something before YouTopia contact Meg to see if you can get on the schedule. More classes will be scheduled as needed.

Expect to spend about 90 minutes in the classroom, followed by hands-on time in the laser loft.

Souk Table decorated

Posted on August 14, 2014 by Paul Williamson

Dave on behalf of Sol Diego volunteered to construct the furniture for the San Diego presence at the Souk at Burning Man 2014. The table top is to be the centerpiece, decorated with a pattern blended with the Quemaduras del Sol sun. The technique is to mask the wood with masking tape, cut patterns in the tape with the laser, and then spray paint the masked areas (rinse, repeat).

Look! Actual Burning Man art being created on the laser! That’s a milestone.

: Dave with the tabletop fully masked with strips of blue painter’s tape.

: Masked tabletop after the laser cut the first layer patterns into the masking tape. The tabletop was designed to be the maximum size that would fit into the laser.

: Dave carries away the masked tabletop for its first round of spray paint.

First test of raster engraving

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Paul Williamson

This 8×8-inch square of plywood was engraved at medium resolution, 529.2×529.2dpi. The original image was a grayscale and resolution test image intended for photography, and it was dithered by the built-in “simple dither” operation. The results are decent, but it took over an hour to engrave. That’s a lot slower than I expected. This machine seems to be quite a bit slower at rastering than the Hurricane laser at MakerPlace.

8×8-inch test pattern engraved at 529.2dpi.

Attempt to cut thick plywood

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Paul Williamson

Tried to cut some half-inch and three-quarter-inch plywood. Results, not so good.

Trying to cut 3/4″ plywood from the scrap heap with the standard lens. The test matrix of squares increases power top to bottom and increases speed left to right. The slower settings set fire to everything in the vicinity, which fire was then stoked by the air assist jet. At no speed or power did it actually cut all the way through. I think the problem is depth of focus, and I have a longer focal length lens that should help somewhat.

First Jobs Run on the Laser

Posted on August 4, 2014 by Paul Williamson

With the exhaust blower installed and ducted, and wired up enough to be used, the laser is now capable of doing work! I successfully ran vector engraving and cutting jobs on paper, thin plywood, and corrugated cardboard.

Running at full power seems to be more than our existing circuit breaker can handle. The circuit is wired for 20A but only has a 15A breaker, so there’s reason to hope that a simple breaker upgrade will solve the problem. If not, we’ll need to do more wiring work.

I’m waiting for word from the manufacturer on how best to level the Z table, which is far enough out of level to cause problems for large jobs.

: First vector cutting test of the laser! Here we’re using very low power to barely mark some plain paper. The design is the “dazzler” LED light fixture from Caroushell (2012), which is in turn based on the sun design from Quemaduras del Sol (2011).

: Same design, with the light fixture details deleted, cut out of plain paper.

: The laser software provides a quick way to run multiple vector tests to try out different power and speed settings. At the top, the first three-plus rows are a first attempt. All had plenty of cutting power to penetrate the thin plywood, but the circuit breaker popped early in the fourth row, ending the test. Below is a completed test at much lower power; it was only able to penetrate the plywood at some of the highest power settings.

: This is what the LCD display on the laser says when it’s vector cutting.

: The milliammeter registers how much current is being fed to the laser during a job.

: This is the first large job. It’s the turtle design from Caroushell (2012). Each shape is a slice of the 3D turtle. They’re numbered (by vector engraving) and cut out (vector cutting) of 1/16″ corrugated cardboard from the art store.

: The turtle pieces after the waste material has been removed. Every piece cut out cleanly!

: This is the Quemaduras del Sol (2011) design, complete with the yin/yang cutouts, at a five inch diameter scale, cut out of thin plywood.

: Here’s the one-eighth scale turtle model after all 66 of the slices are glued together in alignment.

: This view of the top of the turtle shows the stair stepping due to the thickness of the material. On the original full-size sculpture made of 1/2″ plywood slices, we smoothed the surface with a grinder.

: The corrugated cardboard is all oriented in the same direction, so you can see some light coming through the corrugations.

Exhaust Ducting Installation

Posted on August 2, 2014 by Paul Williamson

Today the ducting for the exhaust blower was completed and the blower was mounted in its new doghouse on the roof of Colab. Thanks Natural and Joe!

: Joe installing the new ductwork. It comes through the wall right behind the laser chassis, and goes up to meet an existing vent in the roof.

: Flexible metal ducting connects the wall penetration to the laser chassis, allowing the laser to be pushed up almost against the wall, or pulled out two feet for service. You can also see the cooling water lines (white) and ethernet cable (yellow).

The Laser Lases!