...

The Laser Cutter is technically under the shared equipment authority and requires the user to have fund and group number in order to use. If you are part of a design group (senior design, freshman design, etc) you are free to use the laser cutter so long as you respect the reservations that others have made. 

Modes Of Operation

Raster vs. Vector

...

Using Multiple Modes in the same File

The laser cutter works like a large, powerful pen plotter. The way it knows which settings to use on which curves in the document is by the color of the curve. So if you wanted cut 1 part of the document deeply and raster in the inner portion for etched appearance you could do both operations in 1 go. All you have to do is make sure that the line color is one of the "Laser Cutter X" colors (where X is normal color like blue or red...hence the color should read something like "Laser Cutter Black"). DO NOT use just any color, these colors are the ONLY colors that the laser cutter software will recognize and translate to motions and cuts on the laser cutter. 

Gotchas

• • Beware that the laser cutter does remove material (albeit a very small amount) when it cuts. Pieces will become loose in the laser cutter bed if you cut them out. Ex: You want to etch a Rice Logo into a circular piece of acrylic so you make the logo red and the circular border black. So far so good. But the laser cutter may end up cutting the circular outline first and THEN etching the inside. At this point the circular piece is just "floating" on the laser cutter bed, it has been cut away from the larger rectangular stock and the gas assist from the laser cutter may very well push it around a bit and the etching may suffer in quality. 

Important Settings

Speed and Power

...

Effects of Too Much Speed

• • Lower Quality 
  • Cuts not deep enough

Effects of Too Much Power

• • Cuts too wide
  • "Spattering" on back of soft materials picture
  • Burned out sections wood_burn_out

Gas Assist

DPI

 Useful for making smooth circles. The Higher the DPI the smoother the shape comes out. Also usually slows down speed of cut. If edges of cuts or rasters seem jagged or unclear, try increasing the DPI. Default DPI is about 300. 

Training Materials

[Link to youtube oedk training video]

...

• • Acrylic -- sizes
  • ABS -- Sizes

Paper

Foam

Leather

Printing From Programs

We suggest you export your file to an Adobe Illustrator file if possible. Most drawing programs will be able to export to an illustrator file. If you can not do this then simple simply export to one of the vector file formats (svg, eps, ai). DO NOT just take a screen shot or try to print a rastered picture (jpg, png, bmp, etc). The laser cutter needs a vector file to correctly cut things. You can go through the vectorization process to turn a rastered image into a vector set, but the results are never perfect. Export to vector to ensure a good cut. 

...