Looking to Laser cut some wood

[Paul Askins]

Hello, I'm looking to laser cut some wood to box up a project. What kind of materials should I get? Is there a laser cutter operational at the shop? Who should I contact to help me operate it? I'm pretty knew to this scene, so I appreciate any help you can offer.

[Jan Henry]

Hi Paul,

The laser known as wolverine is running. Check the wiki page I'm sharing for info. Training is required to use the laser cutters. It's possible someone may work with you to cut what you want but a key to remember is while you will find many helpful people, it is expected that you will undertake (the training to get) what you need to know to accomplish what you want. As you're new, do check out the wiki pages as much as you want and ask questions based on what you find there. Welcome to the community! :-) 

https://www.i3detroit.org/wiki/Laser_Cutter_-_Wolverine

On May 8, 2017 8:29 PM, "Paul Askins" <paul.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello, I'm looking to laser cut some wood to box up a project. What kind of materials should I get? Is there a laser cutter operational at the shop? Who should I contact to help me operate it? I'm pretty knew to this scene, so I appreciate any help you can offer.

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[Paul Askins]

Thanks Jan,

I read through the documentation on the wolverine and I still have some questions.

The document uses the example of a PLT file format. Is it capable of accepting DXF files?

The material page says not to cut things with lots of glue. What does glue do under a laser? Does plywood contain too much glue?

On Monday, May 8, 2017 at 8:42:23 PM UTC-4, jan.m.henry.3 wrote:

Hi Paul,

The laser known as wolverine is running. Check the wiki page I'm sharing for info. Training is required to use the laser cutters. It's possible someone may work with you to cut what you want but a key to remember is while you will find many helpful people, it is expected that you will undertake (the training to get) what you need to know to accomplish what you want. As you're new, do check out the wiki pages as much as you want and ask questions based on what you find there. Welcome to the community! :-) 

https://www.i3detroit.org/wiki/Laser_Cutter_-_Wolverine

On May 8, 2017 8:29 PM, "Paul Askins" <paul.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello, I'm looking to laser cut some wood to box up a project. What kind of materials should I get? Is there a laser cutter operational at the shop? Who should I contact to help me operate it? I'm pretty knew to this scene, so I appreciate any help you can offer.

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "i3 Detroit Public" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to i3detroit-publ...@googlegroups.com.
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[David Henry]

Paul,

Plywood is fine.  See https://www.i3detroit.org/wiki/Category:Laser_Cutter#Materials for much more information related to the laser cutters.  As this is common between the lasers, it's not actually on the page specific to one or the other.

David

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[Roger S]

Regarding file formats.  For pictures (bitmaps), most of the common formats can be imported directly.  BMP, PNG, JPEG, etc.  You can engrave them, but the lasers don't do gray-scale, so the picture will be areas of "black" and "white" where the software picks some threshold where it's on above it and off below it.  

DXF and PLT are both supported.  Fun fact: you can also change the extension on an HPGL file to PLT and it still works!  I've found that circles / arcs don't come through as well in DXF files, and PLT files generally import more reliably than DXF.  There are some cases where DXF works better, so if fidelity to the design is critical, try both formats and inspect what they look like in LaserCut.  AI (uncompressed!) also works if you're an Adobe nerd.