1. Before you start - some ‘must do’ checks!
Before switching on the laser cutter, you need to perform a few basic checks on the equipment. Don’t skip these checks, otherwise you could damage the machine, yourself or both.
1. Check that the hose at the back of the machine that runs into the water cooler has no air bubbles or leaks.
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| Water cooler pipes attach to the back of the laser cutter and feed into the water cooler. There should be no leaks, and no air bubbles in the pipes. If you see air bubbles, DO NOT attempt to use the laser cutter. |
2. Check that the water level inside the water cooler is just above the metal cooler filament and that the water is clean. If it needs topping up use either bottled water or preferably distilled water. NEVER tap water.
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| The water cooler. Check that the water covers the metal cooling element (look under the plasti clid) and if not, then top up with either distilled water or if that’s not available, bottled water. NEVER tap water. |
3. Ensure all of the side panels are locked (it won't run otherwise).
4. Check that the power to the laser cutter and the water cooler are switched on at the wall socket.
5. Check that the water cooler is switched on, and if not press the green switch on the front panel of the cooler. The water cooler should show a temperature of between 18-20°. The water cooler looks like this:
2. Switching on the laser cutter
Insert the ignition key into the key socket on the right side of the machine and turn clockwise to switch it on. |
| You should hear the laser cutter start up - the fans will begin to whir and the small pump beneath the machine will start up. The software on the laser cutter itself will initialise and takes only about 5 seconds. |
3. Load the LaserCut Software on the Computer
Your 2D designs are uploaded to the laser cutter via a usb cable connected to the adjacent PC, and the designs are managed using the LaserCut 5.3 software. Hence, you will need to start up the PC adjacent to the laser cutter and load the software before attempting to upload anything . There is a link on the desktop of the PC in the ArtLab called LaserCut5.3 – double click to load it. It will look something like this when you load the application:
Note: it is possible to create some very basic designs using this software alone, but designs containing anything more than text or basic shapes will require the use of an external application such as AutoCad, Illustrator, Google Sketchup or similar. When a design is created by one of these external applications, it will first need to be imported to the LaserCut software, edited (if necessary) and then uploaded to the laser.
4. Loading a design into the editor
To illustrate how to edit a simple design using LaserCut 5.3 you can try opening a sample document, and edit the contents to make your own personalised keyfob.1. Open the keyfob.ecp file by using
File > Open
You will find the file in the folder:
My Documents > LaserCut > Examples
The file will open up in the LaserCut editor and looks something like this:
5. Editing the design (adding text)
The simplest thing to do with this object (short of just cutting it out as it is) is to add some text using the text tool in the LaserCut editor. Whilst this is generally a straightforward operation in most applications, I should warn you in advance that LaserCut isn’t straightforward, and uses some none-standard key shortcuts and operations, just to make things annoying.You might want to first zoom in on the keyfob before you start, to make it easier to add the text. Use the scroll wheel on the mouse for zooming in and out.
Adding text to the keyfob
1. On the left side of the LaserCut interface you will see a button in the vertical toolbar with a capital ‘A’ on the face of it, which is the text tool. So far so good.2. Click on the text tool button to start the text tool.
3. The cursor will change to a cross hair. Click inside the keyfob and drag a rectangular area. (Don’t worry if this is not big enough just yet, you can always enlarge it later)
4. Let go of the mouse button. A pop-up dialog will appear.
5. Type in some text in the Text area – this will appear on the screen when you click on OK. You can also change the font properties here.
6. Click on OK to display the text inside the keyfob:
NOTE: DON’T TRY TO
CLICK ON THE TEXT TO MOVE IT!! READ AHEAD TO SEE WHY...
7. Here’s one of the first annoyances about this software.
Once you have closed the text dialog box, you must click on the arrow tool
first:
8. The text should highlighted in red, meaning that it is currently selected. Now you can click on the blue cross at the centre of the text using the arrow tool, and move the text around on the screen.
If you have accidentally deselected the text, or deselected any of the letters, hold down the shift key and then click on the letters (and any inner parts of letters) to select them and add them to the selected letters. Alternatively, just drag a selection rectangle around them to select all.
9. If the text is too big or too small, hold down the control key and grab one of the corner handles of the text (the small black squares) to resize the text. The shift key can also be used to resize text, but it does not maintain proportions.
6. Setting up the layers
Before you can upload the design file to the laser cutter, you must set up the layers to tell the laser cutter what you want to do with each part of the design. i.e. which parts are to be cut, which are to be engraved, and in what order. The order is important. Generally you will want to start by engraving, then doing the inner cuts, and finally the outer cut. For the keyfob design, this means that you will start by engraving the text, then cut out the small hole for the key ring and finally cut out the entire keyfob.
1. Select the text using one of the methods described above, and make sure that the small hole and the outer rectangle are not selected. The text should be highlighted in red, and the other two parts of the design in black.
At the bottom of the window you can see a toolbar with 40 different colour chips. Click on the blue chip. This will assign the text to the ‘blue layer’, but you will not see any changes to the text until it is deselected. A new layer will appear in the layer properties at the top right of the window:
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| Layer properties panel showing two layers which are currently both assigned as cut. You can change these properties by double-clicking on the coloured rectangles to open the ‘Set engrave options’ dialog. |
2. Now select the arrow tool again (if not already selected)
and click on a blank area above the keyfob design to deselect any layers.
Click on the small circle (the hole) at the top left of the
keyfob design and then click on the green layer chip at the bottom of the
window to assign the hole to the green layer. The layer properties panel should
now look like:
You now need to change the speed and power settings for the
material you are using and the type of operation (engrave or cut).
3. Double-click on the blue rectangle in the layer properties
panel to open the ‘set engrave options’ dialog box:
The only settings you need to worry about here are the Speed
and Power. The correct settings depend upon the material you are using, but as
a rough guide, the table below shows what you need for two common materials:
3mm acrylic and 3 mm birch plywood.
For the text, choose the speed and power settings for
engraving your particular material and enter them into the text boxes in the
dialog. In this example, I am engraving birch plywood:
Once you have entered the values form the table, click on OK
to close.
4. Double-click on the green rectangle in the layer
properties panel, to open the ‘set engrave options’ dialog box. Change the
settings for inner cut for your selected material. Then click on OK to close
the dialog box.
5. Double-click on the black rectangle in the layer
properties panel, to open the ‘set engrave options’ dialog box. Change the
settings for outer cut for your selected material. Then click on OK to close
the dialog box.
The layer properties panel should now look similar to:
6. Now that the speed and power settings have been changed
for your material, you might need to set the order of cutting/enngraving. It’s important that the order is
correct, otherwise you could end up cutting out the keyfob before you have cut
the hole, which could affect the quality of the cut.
The order of operations is set in the layer properties panel
by changing the ordering of the layers shown in there. The laser cutter always
starts with the top layer, and then works layer by layer to the bottom.
You can change the order by selecting a layer (click once) and then press the Up/Down buttons below the layer panel to change the order or layers.
Remember
1. Engrave first
2. Inner cuts
3. Outer cuts
Save your work by choosing:
File > Save As...
and save you work using your own name.
7. Uploading the design to the laser cutter
Now that you have created a personalised design, set the
power and speed, set the layers and layer orders and saved the design, you can
now go onto the final stage of uploading the design to the laser cutter.
1. Click on the ‘Calculate’ button to check that the design
has no errors, such as overlapping lines. If lines overlap you will need to
alter the design and remove these overlaps. There are ways around this, but to
keep things simple we’ll just alter the design to remove overlaps.
2. Make sure that the ‘Immediate’ checkbox is checked at the lower right of the
window, below the layer properties panel.
Checking this box means that we can manually move the laser
cutter head to where we want it to start cutting. It’s much easier to use this
in the long run.
3. Click on the download button. The ‘Stand-alone file
manager’ dialog will open:
If there are no files currently displayed in the dialog, you
can simply click on ‘Download current’ (Not a very sensible name, since we are actually uploading the file). If you
look at the small LCD on top of the laser cutter you should see the name of
your file (which might be truncated if it is too long).
8. Test the cut, before cutting!
Once you have the design uploaded to the laser cutter, you
will need to position the laser cutter head to where you want the laser to
start cutting the material and test the cut to check that it cuts/engraves in
the area of the material that you want. You can place the material anywhere on
the cutting table, so long as it lies within the boundaries of the 60cm x 30cm
table. In the image below, there is a full piece of 60 x 30 birch plywood.
We’ll start by moving the laser cutter head to the desired
location first.
1. To move the cutting head to a start point on your work,
first press the esc button on top of the laser cutter machine. It is located at
the bottom right of the panel:
When you press the escape button, the filename (the text
adjacent to the word FILE in the image above) will become unhighlighted and
then you can use the left and right arrow keys and the up/down arrow keys on
the panel to position the cutting head to an initial start location for your
work.
In the image above, the cutting head has been moved over to
the top left corner of the material. However, you can position it anywhere you
like. Just position it so that it makes the best use of the material, and minimizes
waste.
2. Now, before closing the lid, you will need to check that
the position of the cutting head is correct so that it cuts out the desired
area of material. To do this, just press the ‘Test’ button (NOT the Start/Pause
button). The laser will NOT fire when using the Test button as it does not work
when the lid is up. The Test button
just moves the laser cutter head to demonstrate the area that will be cut. You
can see the area to be cut by looking where the red led moves.
If the cutting head is not positioned over the area you want
to cut, either move the cutting head again or move the material. Use the Test
button again and check the material is correct. Once you are happy with the
location, you can close the lid for the last part.
9. Starting the cut
1. One last thing to do
before pressing the Start button. Check that the cooler is switched on, and
switch the extractor on. The extractor is the pink box adjacent to the laser
cutter with a big plastic hose attached to it, and with a hose that is
connected to a vent in the wall. This must be switched on, otherwise the room
will quickly fill with smoke. You simply press the red switch on the front and
you will hear it sucking the air out of the laser cutter.
2. Now you can press the
Start button and see you design being etched and cut. If you cannot see inside
the laser cutter window (i.e. if it is too dark) there is a switch on the right
side of the laser cutter, just below the main on/off switch. Switch that to the
‘1’ position to turn on the internal light so that you can see your work.
3. The laser cutter will beep
once when it has finished. It’s a good idea to move the cutting head back to
the default position before you take your work out. You can do this by pressing
the Esc key on the keypad (the key at the far right) and then pressing the
‘Datum’ key.
The cutting head will move back to the top right.
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