[sudo-discuss] help with laser cutting (& design) ?

[Marc Juul]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 10:18 PM, Marc Juul <juul at labitat.dk> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 4:33 PM, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've been meaning to design and laser cut a contraption for our Science
>> Sideshow at the Cal Academy NightLive LIVE
>> <http://www.calacademy.org/nightlife/nightlife-live-june> event this
>> Thursday evening, but I'm rapidly running out of time.
>>
>> Anyone able to give me a hand?
>>
>> Basically, I found these vases that look just like giant test tubes -
>> long cylinder with a rounded bottom. So now I want to make a giant test
>> tube rack, and have them sitting at our booth with some food color and dry
>> ice, steaming away. Would look awesome!
>>
>> I got about halfway through designing the thing in Inkscape, but I've
>> never dealt with designing fasteners for plywood before. Needs to have a
>> wide base so it doesn't tip over, but also needs to be hangable from a
>> wall, so the base may need to be removable.
>>
>> If I were to order this through Ponoko, I'd probably go with something
>> like their 1/4 inch amber bamboo plywood
>> <http://www.ponoko.com/make-and-sell/show-material/226-bamboo-amber-3-ply>.
>> Is there any plywood at Sudo? Recommendations for a good place to buy nice
>> plywood?
>>
>
> There is some plywood at sudo room. I haven't tried cutting it, but I did
> cut a design recently so I could show you the process. There's an online
> guide for most of it (which assumes you have windows and illustrator) and
> then there are only two tricky bits:
>
>   * Focusing the laser (which I'm still not sure how to do reliably, I
> just adjusted it while it was running until it looked ok)
>   * Ensuring the pumps and end the external ventilation fan are running.
>
> The two pumps are hooked directly into the printer. Just double-check that
> the water is flowing through the water pump. The external ventilation fan
> is inside of the vent tube that goes to the ceiling and just needs to be
> plugged in before printing and unplugged when you're done.
>
> Other than that I managed to laser cut just using the guide that's linked
> from the sticker on the printer. One gotcha: The printer software will
> refuse to operate without internet for no good reason (FUCK that company).
> Oh and another thing: When importing stuff into illustrator some formats do
> not retain their size. You can double-check this (and fix it) by enabling
> rulers with ctrl+r then click and drag a ruler onto the work area to add
> guide lines (which won't be printed). These can help you rescale your work
> to the correct size, especially if you enable the "snap to guides" feature.
>

Also: I used Windows 8 from within Virtual Box running on a linux box, and
this works fine!

-- 
marc/juul
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