FLA Week 4: Classroom Tool Design - SCOPES Digital Fabrication

Lesson Details

Subjects
Age Ranges
Standards
Fab-Safety.1
Author

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Author

Mark Ng
K-12 teacher

Summary

This lesson is about creating a 3d mini house using 2D acrylic cut parts

What You'll Need

1) Acrylic 3mm

2) Laser cutter

3) Online software – boxes,py

4) CorelDraw

The Instructions

What is kerf?

The laser burns away a portion of material when it cuts through. This is known as the laser kerf

What is kerf?

“Kerf” is a machining term that refers to the material removed during cutting.

Play youtube video A Quick Look at Kerf

https://youtu.be/jDylvHraCAU

 

Why is laser kerf important?

The laser kerf is important because when you are fitting laser cut pieces together like box joints(the typical joint in a laser project) you want the edges of the joints to be tight fitted so that you do not need any glue.

 

How to test the kerf?

We will be drawing a square of size 20mm by 20mm and 30mm by 30mm as shown below in CorelDraw

Laser cut them and measure using the vernier caliper.

 

Measure the square

 

Measure the slot

 

The kerf is (20.1 – 19.8) /2 = 0.15

 

Using box.py

Boxes.py is an online box generator. We will in creating a tight fitted mini bird house.

 I will be using Boxes.py to create a mini house.

The kerf value is place at the burn perimeter.

 

Download the svg and import into CorelDraw

 

Select all and do a right click and combine.

 

Convert all to hairline and red color

 

Laser cut and assemble the parts.

 

Standards

  • (Fab-Safety.1): I can safely conduct myself in a Fab Lab and observe operations under instructor guidance.

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