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August 5, 2007

More Laser Cutting

I've now done a couple more sessions on the laser cutters at Techshop, this time using the Helix. Big, big difference. The Helix can cut the material the first time! Without torching it!

Tedious details follow:

Technorati Tags: design, model building, power tools, techshop, school

Here's a close-up of the mess the Summit made of my wood. It did OK in some spots, but where it was out of focus the cuts blurred together. Messy, messy. This was essentially a total loss, and the Summit works so slowly that this file had taken almost two hours to cut. Or rather, to burn in a sort of imprecise way.

(For the record, I will probably use the Summit for any etching jobs I have because it is not bad at that and it pretty much always free.)

And here we have the Helix hard at work. This is the exact same file as was cut above, and you will note that there are two lines, rather than one blurry one. (This is 4" wide basswood).

Here's one of my grilles I've been drawing and cutting this week. This one is based on some dendritic growth photos I found in a book.

Here's the Helix-cut grille from the file I used on Monday. This is less than four inches tall, again, and those tiny pieces in the middle are incredibly fragile. I may have to redo the file to make this work.

It does look pretty awesome, though.

I'm working on some more pieces today (I have to take a break because somebody was waiting for the cutter), and then I will be making them into models this week. The laser cutter is definitely making a huge difference in my ability to iterate on my designs.

Posted by ayse on 08/05/07 at 4:33 PM