Comments on: Design and Laser Cutting Tests for Sculpture about the First Internet Transmission

By: greg

greg — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:04:40 +0000

Well, my top layers aren’t connected to themselves; they’re lots of little isolated pieces. If you look at the picture, each later would end up being a bunch of tiny circles and squares that I’d then have to glue in place. I did some experiments with designing the thing as three layers where each little piece was connected to the others by thin strips of plastic, like a model airplane kit. The idea was that I’d then be able to glue each layer on top of the others and then remove the intermediate connecting pieces. But that seemed like a hugely increased amount of work (if it would even succeed) compared to just using the finished, etched piece from the cutter.

By: Shahar

Shahar — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:00:45 +0000

Why not cut first, then glue the layers together? That’s what I’m thinking of doing…

By: greg

greg — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:00:03 +0000

Each of my shallower layers is both faster and at lower power than the deeper one above it. Like the final (version 6) settings: deepest: power = 100, speed = 20%, middle: power = 60, speed = 55%, shallowest: power = 20, speed = 90%. Moving a weaker laser over the material faster results in a shallower cut.

There is a little bit of an issue with the material around the edges of deeper cuts getting a little messy, but that was an acceptable trade-off for how much more visible the deeper cuts were.

I think your lamination suggestion would totally work if I wanted color. Arturo was telling me about one of the guys at AMS who makes huge stacks of different colors of paper glued together and then laser cuts them so that the different colors emerge with the cut.

By: Eric Mika

Eric Mika — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 02:51:45 +0000

Oh I also wonder if you could laminate several layers of 1 / 16″ or 1 / 32″ plexi together to get a color gradient across cut depths. Can the laser cut through the methylene chloride glue we’re always using on the floor?

By: Eric Mika

Eric Mika — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 02:48:45 +0000

That looks amazing!

I’m surprised there’s not an issue with scorch marks… and I still don’t understand the trade off between speed and power. It seems like low speed + low power should give the same result as high speed + high power… unless there’s something interesting going on with how the acrylic melts / cools.

This info should end up on the wiki!