Step-by-step: Laser cutting Saint Patrick's Day coasters
Dremel Laser Cutter
The Dremel Laser Cutter is up and running in the Fab Lab.
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Saint Patrick's Day coaster set
My wife's Irish, so we're celebrating Saint Patrick's Day. I whipped up a set of coasters to go with the meal on Sunday.
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Four-leaf clover clip art
I started with this wonderful piece of clip art from the Open Clipart site, by user Firkin.
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Open the file in Illustrator
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I downloaded the PDF and opened the file in Illustrator.
Use layers
Fortunately, the PDF came in layers, so I was able to separate out the outline, which I'll score with the laser beam.
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Draw a 4-inch circle
In Illustrator, I drew a four-inch circle.
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Parametrically draw the circle
An easy way to parametrically draw the circle is to single click on the canvas. The Ellipse dialog comes up and you can enter dimensions.
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Bring the clip art onto the circle file
I then brought the clip art image (both layers) onto the circle, so they were all in the same file.
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Resize and align
Next, I resized and aligned the clip art to fit inside the circle. I also made sure the circle was a different color from the black stroke border of the clip art. This helps the laser cutter identify actions to take later.
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Export a PDF for cutting
Following the excellent instructions by Kathryn McElroy, I unchecked all the PDF options and exported.
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Scan the bed
Using Dremel's DigiLab laser software in a browser interface, I scanned an image of the laser bed to properly place my project.
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Stitch photos together
To get a more accurate view of the bed, the Dremel Laser Cutter takes nine pictures and stitches them together.
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Fresh birch plywood
I started with a 1/4-inch thick slab of formaldehyde-free birch plywood.
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Import cut and stroke
First I imported the cut file. Then I imported the stroke file. The difference between these is that cut will cut through the wood and stroke just scores the wood.
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Design once, cut twice
Because this is only a 40-watt laser, cutting through 1/4-inch plywood takes two passes. My outer circle was red, so I selected the red color for the cut.
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Know the score
For the score line, I did only one pass and used only 25 percent power.
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Import the engraving file
Next, I imported the engrave file, which is the area shaded inside the design.
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Prepare process order
The next step is to prepare the process order. You want to cut last. I decided to engrave, then score, and then cut.
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Move to the printer
Next, it was time to move to the printer. Once I made sure my exhaust fan was on, I was ready to confirm the run.
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Here we go!
Each coaster took about nine minutes to produce.
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We have coaster!
Here's the first coaster, cut right out of the plywood.
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Engraving in action
You can see the engraving in action here on the second coaster.
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Repeat!
Because the printer saves job information, it was possible to go into the history and repeat the process without queuing up another job. In less than an hour, I had my four coasters.