Laser Cutting

Today we took to the workshop and did our first trial cutting out stencils using the laser cutting machine in the industrial block. This was a very good use of our time as we learn a lot about the materials, machine and shapes.
Using the machine was a learning process. Our first mistake was the layering on the illustrator files and how they were all on different layers instead of one.
First we realised that not all the files we made were the right dimensions meaning that when we had to enlarge them to be cut the slots were now larger then 3mm and did not fit into the shapes.
Once we had used the machine we waited a little before pushing th shapes out of their slots. This proved the wrong thing to do as the warm glue inside the mdf had started to harden meaning that some broke or wouldn't come out when we pushed them.
The tree measurements also were not correct so they didn't slot into each other perfectly meaning that the tree was not fully stable, though it did stand up. The next issue was that the laser cutter only worked up to A3 size which meant that the shapes but most importantly the tree had to be under that size and if we wanted to make it bigger it would have to be made in more separate parts. We also can't know if the tree would be stable that big or would it be too flimsy with thin MDF.
Another error we found was that the slots were slightly off, this will be explained in a later post.
These are all things we have learnt and can fix next time we are on the machine, the testing has been very successful and this is what we have produced so far.