Laser Lunes Mentorship Mondays - sudo-discuss

29 Jan 2022

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