Friday, April 29, 2016
Up-Close and Personal with Laser Cuts
Hackaday: Plenty of materials take the heated edge of a laser beam quite well, but many others don’t. Some release toxic fumes; others catch fire easily. For all the materials that don’t cut well (PVC and FR4, we’re looking at you!) and for those that do (hello, acrylic and Delrin) they’re each reacting to the heat of the laser beam in different ways. Lucky for us, these ways are well-characterized. So let’s take a look at how a laser cutter actually cuts through materials.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I had never even heard of a laser cutter before coming here, and it felt so unexplainably fancy and high tech that I couldn’t even imagine myself using one. I was so surprised how convenient it would be to be able to draft something in AutoCAD and have it be perfectly executed through a machine. I’ve always had mixed feelings about these new technologies being used in theater, particular in scenic model building, just because I’m someone who loves hands- on creation and really appreciates the “old- fashioned” ways of making things. However, since using the laser cutter a lot for the set for my arcade project I definitely see the benefits of being able to use such a tool in the interest of time and precision. While I definitely still don’t understand the science behind the laser cutter, I think it’s an incredible tool that, while not always necessary, is able to be incredibly useful.
I am personally a pretty big fan of the lazer cutter. It’s ability to transform a 2d digital drawings and a flat sheet of materiel into parts that can be pieced together to create something 3d adds so much to the work we can do. One of the things I do wish the laser cutter could do however is cut angles. The article talks about how there is a small bevel in the piece your cutting and I wonder if this could be eliminated by tipping the laser beam slightly. I also would love the ability to miter corners of larger materials like acrylic. There are obvious difficulties that come with introducing two more axis of movement into a machine this precise but I think it could have a large positive effect if we do it right.
This is really interesting. I think the slightly angled edge due to the way light comes through the laser is really cool. It makes complete sense, but I never considered it before, even though I have done a fair amount of laser cutting. Next time I laser cut a thicker material, I’m going to check to see if I can noticed the angled edge, even though I know it might be too subtle for me to see. Also, I usually cut acrylic, but I never realized the laser actually vaporizes the material. I always thought it melted it, though in retrospect, that doesn’t make sense because if I don’t cut all the way through on the first pass, the cuts are still clean and there is no re-solidifying in the groves. The laser cutter is such an interesting tool, and it is really great to learn about how it works, both in terms of how the laser is hot enough to cut and how the materials it cuts are able to be cut with heat.
I wont say I’m an expert on laser cutters after reading this article but it is definitely cool to understand more about how it cuts and the way it works. When you are laser cutting different materials you have to go through and adjust all of the different setting in order to actually cut through the material. Some of those settings that require adjustment are completely foreign to me as far as what they do to the machine, but after reading this article I definitely know how the laser works and how it is able to be dense enough to get through different materials. Another interesting thing is the auto focus; I never understood why the auto focus was so important until just now. After the laser goes through a series of lenses it creates a cone shape and if that cone shape isn’t hitting the material correctly it brings down the power of the laser in a big way. These are all things that I learned for using the laser cutter and doing my own research on the machine. It is really important to understand a big piece of equipment like this before you start using it.
Post a Comment