Design Practice

Laser cutter induction

For future reference and to utilise the facilities around the college for Design for Print, I booked myself into a laser cutter induction.

We received a booklet on how to use the laser cutter, and then had a go ourselves.

It was fairly straight forward, although there were a few things I thought were worth noting down:

• File format other than the Ethos Software is Adobe Illustrator files and vector images. NOT PDFs because they will not save it in vector format, this is only good for raster images.
• When opening an illustrator file, it's best to copy the design from that file once opened to a blank Ethos file to ensure that all the options are available (default settings available on a blank doc)
• Fonts are not saved on illustrator files, so be sure to create outlines on all text with consideration of stuff that may fall away within the letterforms.
• Be sure to pick the 'laser effects' preset when creating a new doc.
• For images, lower the raster stripe size for more intricate detail.
• Inverse the raster effect when working with acrylic as it goes lighter when engraved.
• The laser cutter is NOT drop in, but booking only.
• To pause the laser cutter at anytime, press the hand symbol button at any time during the job.

Materials that can be laser cut

Examples:

Joe asked about laser cutting pages, and how this can be replicated and kept consistent. Jake informed us that he had produced a jig for this: