Health and Safety
The laser cutters are relatively risk free in comparison to much of the machinery to be found within the college. Having said that, there are a few rules and pointers.
1. The laser cutter is not to be left unattended- whilst the risk of fire is small, the situation can quickly escalate without prompt action. (The have been instanced of fire before on these cutters)
2.Ensure that the fume extraction is on and operating properly before cutting any materials.
3.No mirrors/reflective materials to be place in the laser cutter. The laser beam of light, light reflects on mirror to cut somewhere else.
4.Please do not put any materials in the cutter that are coated in solvents, chemicals etc as these cause toxic fumes and or increase flammability
5.You must book the laser cutter for use. The booking form can only be accessed by your course administrator or workshop staff and enables you to reserve the cutter and for staff to be sure that you are appropriately trained in the safe use of the cutter.
6. Be aware of where the emergency power cut off is and the location of the extinguisher in event of emergencies.
7. Do not interfere with any of the safety mechanisms
Note: A breach of any of these rules will result in immediate banning from the laser cutter.
Basic Specifications
Materials:
Paper- Nearly all types of paper cut well. Exceptions to this are those with reflective coatings, which may need a piece of newsprint over the top to negate the reflective properties. There are several paper types listed in the cutter at present and more can be added as appropriate.
Fabric-Most fabrics will work fine although you should be aware that some materials might have been coated which will affect performance. Common fabrics that have already been tested and calibrated include, cotton poplin, satin, silk, felt, wools, leathers and polyesters.
Plastics- Acrylic, acetates, polyesters, vinyl, melamine, and Perspex etc all work particularly well with the cutter. Ideally the plastics you use should be "Thermodynamic" plastics as these cut the best, do not burn or warp. A guide to the most common plastics (both Thermodynamic and Thermosetting) is listed in the file plastic types.doc
Wood-The laser cutter is capable of handling small quantities of wood. Manufactured woods such as chipboard, MDF and Ply board will generally only cut up to a depth of 6-9mm, others ail vary according to the density of grain but it is not unreasonable to be in the region of 10. These materials are particularly slow to cut and will be subject tot approval by workshop staff.
Glass- Etching and engraving only. Subject to approval by workshop staff.
Ceramics, Stone, Concrete, Plaster and other aggregates compounds- Etching and engraving is possible although this is a slow process. Stone is dependant on the type and finish as to the depth of cut.
Metals- The machine is insufficiently fitter to cut or etch metals. Even low and soft density metals such as Copper or tin will not mark let alone cut.
Sizes:
The machine will handle a flat surface area measuring approx. 720mm wide by 930 mm high although cutting to the fullest extents of this is not always possible. In general it is best to work on the basis of a sheet of A1 size material as anywhere can be cut.
Depth of materials can be manually calibrated to allow for this thinnest of materials up to a maximum material depth of 81mm for a full sheet design, with smaller samples i.e A3 having a maximum depth of 92mm.
File-types:
Raster (i.e photoshop) -JPG,BMP,TIFF,GIF,PICT,EPS
Vector (i.e Illustrator)- AI,DWG,EPS,DXF
N.B Vector files are generally by far and away the quickest and easiest files to cut.
Raster is only really practical for photographs reproduction (for printing blocks etc.)
Media Devices:
USB removable storage devices, DVD, CD, Floppy disk.
Note: The cutter is not networked so neither internet access or intranet are possible.
Logging on and accessing the programme:
Turn Laser on (lower right hand corner at the front of the cutter), ensuring that extraction system starts also)
Power up computer
Click on 'start' tab at the bottom left of the computer screen, which will bring up a programme menu.
Select 'ApS-Ethos Series' from the start menu
A log in dialogue will appear- Password is at present disabled although you should note that this may change from time to time as appropriate for administration and training purposes.
This will take you into the program ready to start opening designs.
Opening designs, scaling and orientation:
Opening designs:
To load a 'Vector' o,age (we'll come back to Raster/Photoshop images in a later session) select tje 'Design' tab from the top and then scroll down to select 'Import', the Adobe Illustrator' (ai extension).
A new dialogue window will now open enabling you to select the file, click on your file and press open.
As in the case of initially opening a design page, you will be presented with the dialogue box below. Again double click the 'Laser Effects' box located to the right.
Your image will automatically open now and be displayed.
Scaling designs:
First select your design by either left clicking the mouse and drag and drop to select your design work or pressing 'CTRL A' which selects all design work.
Select the 'Edit' tab from the toolbar at the top and then scroll down to select 'Rescale'
The design size window will now appear-enter the size that you require the design to measure.
Note: All sizes are in millimetre (mm) and take that you do not select a design size bigger than your substrate/material.
Standard A-series sizes of paper in mm are as follows,
A5-148 * 210
A4- 210 * 297
A3- 297 * 420
A2- 420 * 594
A1- 594 * 841
Type in your scaled size and then press ok
Orientation:
Generally when you open your design work you will have already set the orientation. However, now and again it is convenient to rotate your design for a best fit for your material choice.
From the top tool bars, on the right hand side select the 'rotate' tool tab.
You can now rotate your image manually by left clicking and dragging on the corner points or alternatively select 'CTRL N' and a prompt will open up alllowing you to rotate am exact amount i.e 90 degrees.
Setting material Area for the Laser Cutter
1. Ensure the Laser Cutter is turned on/off switch is located on thr front of the cutter. Check also that the emergency power off switch has not been activated
2. Lift cutter lid and place your material in the cutter. Lower lid.
3. All the functions to specify the machine cutting area are carried out from the control panel located on the front, top right of the cutter.
4. Press Online (hand button)
5. Press the material button, cutter display will read "load media"
6. Press Enter
7. Cutter display will now read "set origin". This is to determine the start of you material and is the bottom left of your page. Use the control panel curser to move the cutter head to the bottom left of the page
8. Press Enter
9. Cutter display will now read "set media"- Repeat as for step 7, although this time you are moving the cutter head to the top right of the page.
10. Press Enter and you are done
11. Return to computer and Cut design as per handbook
Adjusting the laser height
At the front of the laser barrel you will see a black plastic thumbscrew (focus adjustment screw) for height adjustment. Undo this and adjust to the height of your material accordingly. Ideally the laser barrel should be 3mm above the surface of material being cut. (use scrap piece of 3mm acrylic as a spacer)
Cut effects and cutting:
You now need to inform the laser cutter of how you want to cut the image.
Drag and drop the mouse cursor over the elements of your design to be cut.
Now that the image is selected you need to assign the elements of your drawing with a colour- this colour is used by the cutter to determine which elements of the will be cut or engraved etc.
If your drawing has no colour it is possible to assign colours from the toolbar at the top. 1st select the bits of drawing to be coloured and then select a colour from the drop down colour palette .
Now, select the 'Tools' tab from the toolbar and ten ' edit cut effects'
You will then be presented with the cut effects dialogue window.
Select an effect-e.g. 'Cut through' and then highlight the colour of your design (in the example of the giraffe, red) select the set option.
Note that the red colour tab now read 'cut-through' as opposed to 'unassigned'
Select your next effect- e.g. 'Engrave' then highlight the colour of your design (in the example of the giraffe, green), select the set option.
Note that the green colour tab now reads 'engrave as opposed to to 'unassigned'
This process has now informed the cutting programme (Aps-Ethos) which elements of the drawing you wish to cut, engrave etc.
N.B The colours you select do not matter, they are for visual purposes only.
As a general rule I always select red for cut, green for engrave and orange for a deeper engrave, like traffic lights as mnemonic for remembering the cutting order.
The next stage is to inform the cutter of your power and speed requirements for cutting.
To do this:
Select the 'Output' tab from the toolbar and then Material Manager followed by Setup
A dialogue window will now open.
Press the delete option (Dont worry, you are not deleting any information, you are merely informing the laser cutter that you wish to give some new instructions.)
This will now open up the Material Manager properties dialogue window.
Here you can select your material type (highlighted in green). If your material is not here you may need to create a new one.
If you need to create a new material or adjust the cut settings- contact a course tutor.
Press Ok
You are now ready to commence cutting.
If you are ready to cut, select the 'Output' tab from the toolbar menu and then 'Cut Design'
A dialogue window will now open, enabling you to view the cut settings and make any last alterations to the design- confirm that the material and design are all correct and press ok.
A dialague window will now prompt you to confirm that a new material exists. (The machine is checking that you want to cut the material in the cutter.)
Press Ok- The cutter will now commence)
Rastering a Photo:
In some instances such as creating a woodblock it can be more convenient to 'raster cut' your image rather than use file types such as illustrator.
N.B This process is very slow in comparison but great for reproducing photographic type imagery
Example Image (image can be a TIF file installed in Ethos/Images)
To place an image, go to 'Image' from the toolbar then 'Insert image'.
This will open up a window asking you to select your file- Images may be in tiff, jpeg and bitmap files amongst others.
Select your image and press open and then drag and drop onto the desktop
Rescale as appropriate.
You should now have something similar but with your own image.
Note your image will automatically turn to 64 bit colour greyscale
An example is on the computer called 'Image.tif'
Next select the image then go to 'Edit' on the top toolbar and scroll down to select properties.
Click on the 'Engraving Properties' tab if it is not already visible . To enable an image for engraving the 'Enable Engraving' check box should be set on.
The "scan line resolution" is the distance between the laser lines as it scans back and forth across the image. A setting of 0.2 will give a good definition, higher values will produce a lined appearance (less dense coverage).
The "white space" setting is the overrun value added to either end of the scan lines to allow the laser head to accelerate to the correct speed before laser firing begins. In most cases 10mm is adequate. In the future, if the laser head speed is increased this value may also need to be increased.
The vertical setting should usually be left on. This setting dictates whether the engraving is made up by and down motions or side to side.
The grey levels setting is used at output time and indicates the colour reproduction to be applied to the grey scale image. For example the default of 64 will produce up to 64 different laser power levels, while 16 will only produce up to 16. The value you choose will be dependant on the image you are engraving (photos may require 64 greys while a flat colour clip art may only require 16).
The negative setting is usually off, but when engraving on dark materials (such as denim) should not be set to ON to invert the colours of an image.
The "Power Contrast" setting is an output parameter which will process the laser powers used by the image to enhance the final engraving results. Usually on tonal images the "high" value gives excellent results but you may find that you will need to drop the values down for more flat colour images which use less colours.
The "fill colour" and "use images" are not used in this case and should be left as they are.
In this example the default settings are adequate and the "Enabling Engraving" is checked.
Press Apply to assign these settings to the image. If you have imported a colour image then it will be automatically converted to 256 grey scale image when the settings are applied. Press ok to exit the dialog.
Select 'Output" from the top tool bar and then 'Material manager'. Select your material type and then for the Default Cutting Effect you need to select 'Raster' as your cut setting.
To cut your image, go to 'Output' and 'Cut Design' as per earlier instructions.
How to show the laser cutter where you material is.
1. Make sure the machine is ONLINE
If it isn't press the hand button
2. Next, to show the cutter where your work is on the bed press the button under the hand followed by the arrow button
3. Now use the curser arrows to move the red dot shining out of the laser nozzle. The red dot should be lined up with the lowest left corner of your material.
Press the arrow button to store this first position
4. Now use the arrows to move the red dot to the highest right corner of your material, remember to add an extra 3cm both above and to the right. Again use the arrow button to store this second position
(note that the nozzle will move back to the first position you stored.)
No comments:
Post a Comment