LaserLab 101

How It Works

• • Laser tube in the back

  • 90W Carbon Dioxide Laser

  • Fires out the left side, 1 cm thick beam

  • Bounces off mirrors and hits lens to focus the beam. 

  • When the laser is in focus, the beam is .25mm to .5mm wide, depending on material thickness and settings.

  • Focus height

  • Make sure lid is closed - Laser will fire if lid is open (super dangerous!!)

Laser Cutter Fees

• • Drop-In Rate: $2/cutting minute 

  • Member rate: $1.50/cutting minute

Materials

• • Wood

    • Up to 3/8“ (or 9mm)

    • Can cut 3/4“, but very slowly

    • Baltic birch plywood is highly recommended over other plywoods

  • Acrylic

    • Up to 3/8" (or 9mm)

    • Mirrored acrylic MUST be cut with the mirror side facing down

  • Fabric & Leather

  • Paper Products

    • Cardboard

    • Paper ** do not cut stacks of paper. Air can get in between the sheets and cause a fire.

  • Metal

    • Etch, using special spray

  • Ceramics, Glass

    • Etching

  • NO VINYL or PVC, ever. A credit card is PVC. A vinyl record or pleather is vinyl. Super bad for you and the machine (makes Chlorine gas!)

Different Laser Cuts

• • Cut

    • Laser cuts through the material following a vector line

  • Trace

    • Laser traces, leaving a mark on the material along a vector line

  • Raster

    • Laser engraves an image into the material in a black/ white (engrave/raw) method

  • Raster with Dither

    • Laser engraves an image into the material in a grey scale (engrave/partially engrave/raw) method

  • Raster with higher dpi

    • Laser engraves an image into the material with a higher precision.

Safety Considerations

• • Power button

  • Before cutting make sure the fan is on

  • NEVER LEAVE THE LASER CUTTER when it is on.

  • Clean up! Users are responsible for clean up after themselves

  • Water spray

  • Fire extinguisher

  • If you're ever unsure of anything, ask staff

NEVER CUT THESE MATERIALS

WARNING: Because many plastics are dangerous to cut, it is important to know what kind you are planning to use. Make has a How-To for identifying unknown plastics with a simple process..

How It Breaks

• • Running the floor up into the laser head (super bad); keep z-movement speed to 30mm/s or below

  • Running the laser head into the edges (less bad), need to re-home after that occurs

  • If you ever hear a loud noise, unwanted laser/bed movement - HIT THE RED STOP BUTTON

  • Support systems not turned on - Laser tube will break ($1250 fine)

Support Systems

• Exhaust switch by front door must be ON

  • pulls out smoke and fumes

• Industrial Chiller must be ON

  • cooling -- laser tube gets hot, will break if too hot ($1250 fine)

• Air compressor is ON

  • keeps lens clear -- blows out small fires -- stokes embers 

***Both chiller and air compressor should be connected to the same power bar behind the computer; wait for 2 beeps before starting your cut***

Different Laser Techniques

• • Jigging

    • To engrave or cut into something perfectly, the way you set your zeros

  • Different Bases

    • Pro: The honeycomb is great for small pieces. Con: It can heat up from the laser and scorch the bottom of your piece.

    • The metal grate (underneath the honeycomb) has fewer bars, and scorchs your piece less.

    • A wooden base, underneath your piece, will reduce scorching

  • Taping your piece (masking tape)

    • Taping your piece will remove scorching wherever you cut

    • Downside: you will have to remove it afterwards and depending on your cut, could be very tedious.  For rasters, may have to up the power by 1 or 2 to burn through tape and surface of material.  Please do a test!

  • Cutting out of focus

    • With the laser in focus, the line beam is .25 to .5 mm wide depending on material thickness and settings.  It will leave a trace the thinnest possible, depending on how the material reacts

    • Taking the laser out of focus, the width of the beam will be larger if you want a thicker trace, but it may not cut all the way through.

Machine Set Up

Lay and secure material on the bed, move laser head away, and how to align (z -direction, and horizontal zero)

Software

1) Design from any vector based software; MakerLabs computers will all have Inkscape.

2)  Initial Laser Set-up

• • Open Lightburn from program bar or desktop - red icon with the dragon head

  • Make sure Laser is turned on - it will connect automatically

  • X, Y origin is always set as the top left corner of your job; if you change this for any reason, change it back when you're done

  • "Move" tab in Lightburn to control the laserhead

    • There are separate tabs for Horizontal Movement and Z-Axis Movement; Horizontal can be up to 100mm/s, Z should never be higher than 30mm/s

    • If Continuous Jog is off, you can set how much one click will move; this is good for finessing your Z-Height focus 

    • Move from Machine Zero must always be turned off.

  • Use the Z-stick to focus the Z height

  • Frame (previously Jog perimeter), in the "Laser" tab will show you outside dimensions of your file

  • Pause will pause your job and restart from that point, Stop will fully stop the cut and return the laserhead to your zero point.

  • Layers should be set in this order: raster, then trace, then cut.

3) File Set-up

All files should be saved in PDF Format to import into Lightburn, however we highly recommend also having your SVG file with you in case you need to make changes to the file

Imported files will appear under "Cuts/Layers" tab, and will be organized by colour of the vectors.  Cutting order can be manually changed.

**Important: There are sqitches for Output and Show on each layer.  If Output is on, it will be sent to the laser even if Show is off.

Rastering

• Like a printer, moves back and forth and fills in area

• You can control: speed, power, b/w threshold, DPI

• Black/White threshold is the level that divides black, what gets engraved, and white, what does not 

• We recommend between 100mm/s and 140/mm/s; please test for your material

• Choose between Threshold (no dither) and Halftone for different rastering results

• Power settings for rastering are recommended between 9 and 11; 8 or below will not fire.

Vector Cutting / Tracing

• Follows the vector lines to either trace a shape or cut through material

• Different line colors can have different settings

• Drag the colours to reorder the cutting order. Laser will cut from the top to the bottom of the list

  • Tracing should be first

  • Cutting should be last

• We have not tested all the material settings in the saved library, please always test your settings on a scrap piece of the same material before your final project/cut. 

• Never use more than 60 Power

Once settings are input, do the following:

• Make sure fan is on

• Maker sure support systems are on

• Run frame/job perimeter

• Close the lid

• Hit play; don't forget to time your cuts!

Commonly Used Settings 

Please note, these are estimated starting points and you should always run a test on your material; we have not tested all materials and thicknesses.

Under the "Library" tab, you will find a list of materials and thicknesses.  Find the one you are looking for, tab down until you get to "cut" and with the desired layer selected, press "Assign". AAA default is where you will find general trace/raster settings.

Settings on unfamiliar material

• • Run test cuts, start your guesses settings based on the closest material

Cleaning Your Material

• Burn marks can be sanded off of wood

• Acrylic can be cleaned with soap and water.  DO NOT use rubbing alcohol, as it will cause fractures in the acrylic.

Create Keychains

• • Have each participant create a keychain using “LaserLab 101 - Keychain.svg” as a starting point

  • Demonstrate the technique of jigging, by flipping the key chain and rastering the back side

Cost

see current rates on website here: makerlabs.com/membership

FAQ

• No Connection/Asking for IP address? 

  • IP address 169.254.239.1

  • Still not connecting? Try in this order:

• 1. Unplug the laser, by usb, from the computer, then plug it back in

  2. Shut off the laser, using the red button, and turn it on again (wait 1 min)

  3. Restart Lightburn

  4. Restart the computer and the laser cutter simultaneously

• Error while jogging - Project too large: 

  • A: homing issue

  • B: if it is properly homed, might just have to override it. Proceed with jogging.

• Laser Head stuck; not moving past a certain point/specific direction. 

  • A: Gantry positions might be locked. Try toggling the Lock button. 

  • B: Still doesn’t work, shut down the laser cutter and reboot it. Give it about 3 minutes to be fully up and running.

Common Inkscape Issues

• Everything is ungrouped?

  • Use CTRL + A (for All) until everything is selected

  • Then repeatedly hit CTRL + U (for ungroup) until each element is its own component

• Layer and object opacity set to 100%

  • Opacity settings can be found in 4 places

    1. Bottom of colour bar

2. Layer bar

3. Fill tab and Stroke tab > Alpha level should be 100% (percentage) or 255 (hex value)

• Coloured stroke but White fill instead of none? (Results in double tracing)

  • Click on box with X

  • Set Fill to no fill in the Fill & Stroke tab

  • How do you know if something has a white fill? You can check in the bottom left corner; it should say ‘Fill: none’. If there is a white swatch then there is a fill.

Fill versus stroke?

Fill is in the inside of the shape whereas stroke is the outline of the shape. Make sure you're on the correct tab or pressing SHIFT appropriately. (SHIFT & click on colour = stroke. Click on colour = fill)

If still having Inkscape issues, try copying your elements into a blank file.