[sudo-discuss] Laser Lunes Mentorship Mondays

Hello Sudoers I am happy to announce that I finally came full circle with my laser skills to be able to offer mentorship to Sudo Roomers.  I have been for several months taking my lasering from user on one machine to understanding multiple and some over-all skills, drilling down to what we have in our blessed upgraded "Chinese Red and Black" (!)(no really that is the open shared handle/keywords).  We have access to an amazing machine that just so happens to be one of the more common and reliable "off brand" (ie knock off of possibly "OmTech") machines), so sorta kinda open source (limited documentation).  It has been upgraded I think to 100wso is actually more powerful that it was originally.  It currently works fairly well. After many hours and tears I discovered and rectified the Red and Black's cracked lense and mirror alignment issues that contributed to its past lack of power.  (Always a work in progress) I have been working with machine for about 2 months now wanting to share its baddass-ness, but needing to maintain and learn about the Queen.  I had been having trouble engraving to make it look better than a blasted out version or any pic.  I am not able to generate a photographic quality engraving, but I am now finally able to make a metaphor of the original and also success with cutting 1/8 birchwood, 1/4 in MDF, acrylic, and 1/4 in plywood with many passes, I am now ready to share my findings with the community and give various versions of a "laser training" to Sudo.  For this training we will only be cutting 1/8 Birchwood or 1/4 MDF.  In the future we can work with Acrylic or late if everyone else has gone home (stinky!). We will focus on introduction to laser cutting safety, generating viable files, and specs to work with various materials. I have worked for months and months now to get to this point so please understand coming into this how valuable this moment is to have access to such a powerful machine.  Please try to come to at least 3 of these mentorships and expect to watch some videos and/or read some material before being confident lasering.  There are so many ways to not do the appropriate thing for the cutter.  It is important to know exactly why you are choosing what settings you do.  It is imortant to maintain high awareness as you proceed from design to cutting.  A wrong move could scorch the mirrors, the lense, ruin your art, or start a small fire (which could ruin the machine).  Improper use can also cause undo air quality issues that also could be avoided (no vinyl ever!!!) It is with all these things in mind and great respect for the tool and the community that training and constant awareness is needed by community members with every cut. I am now able to teach a comprehensive beginner level training.  I will do it in "Mentor style" at first, taking in the skill levels of whoever shows up, possibly culminating in a joint class with a professional. Keep in mind even "simple cuts" can take much editing to be ready, and can take much time to cut.  I can only teach from practical short example files to start, and report back from longer more ornate projects that I have finished. With this in mind, if you expect to cut something on a non-acrylic focused Laser Lunes, please bring your own 1/8 in Birchwood slab from Blick for ~$6.00 for a 12/24 in sheet or 1/4 in MDF from McFee's lumber.  I must prioritize these materials for the first few classes, as other materials take 2-5x more cut passes and may stink quite a bit more. I will select simple SVG files from the community to cut in the mentorship, and can advise on improving your vector files (Inskape!) I will continue to hold Laser Lunes mentorship Mondays, 6pm -10/late, and will also have an acrylic night soon.  Please consider donating to Sudo Room on behalf of this class: https://sudoroom.org/donate/ (Also one could bring some extra 1/8 Birchwood from Blick to share with future Laser Lunes Mentorship Mondays/the Room.) Multipass! Lilu