The document provides information and guidelines for laser cutting different materials like plexiglass and plywood. Some key points covered include: - The thickness of materials should generally not exceed 8mm for plexiglass or 10mm for plywood for best results with laser cutting. Thicker materials can be made by gluing thinner layers. - Factors like focused vs out of focus laser, file preparation and optimization, joint and corner design, and nesting of pieces can influence cut quality and efficiency. - Various tricks like foldable patterns, T-slots, and laser origami bending are described that allow for more flexible or reinforced designs.

1. LASERCUTTING 2LASERCUTTING 2
TUTORIALTUTORIAL

2. The thickness of the material has a
high influence on design aspect.
Before designing the pieces, the
thickness should be decided.
On our laser it's better to not go
beyond 8 mm (plexi) or 10 mm
(plywood).
You can probably reach even
more, but the cut will be very
difficult and not clean.
To create a thicker layer it's
possible to glue several thinner
layers together.
THICKNESS AND JOINTS

3. When the laser is out of focus, the spot
is larger and more visible.
You can decide to keep the laser out of
focus to have some darker engrave
FOCUSED OR
OUT OF FOCUS
1- Laser beam
2- Cutting gas
3- Focusing lens
4- Cutting head / nozzle
5- Work-piece
6- Blow-out molten mass

4. HOW TO PREPARE
A FILE
Any vector present in the
file will be processed by
the machine.
The thickness of the cut
is irrelevand, as is the
colour of the line, on our
lasercut software. Even
rastered images can be
used.

5. For the machine, all the
vectors are paths that the laser
will follow. How it will work
while moving depends on the
settings of the software of the
machine.
THE VECTORS

6. COLOUR
SUBDIVISION
To make it easier to
assign the pens for
cutting, you need to
group all the
vectors which
should be worked
in the same way in
one single layer
and colour.

7. Once in the machine you
assign parameters to obtain
the various effects. Note that
even fills and dotted lines
are assigned by using
simple lines. If you want a
particular dotted line (for
example dots with various
lenghts) it has to be drawn in
CAD.
ASSIGNING THE
PARAMETERS

8. If I want to be sure of the
resistance of the join I can
insert parts that guarantee
the interference. With
0,25mm per side I have an
almost irreversible joint, with
0,1 mm very soft.
DRAWING THE JOINTS
(WOOD)
http://blog.ponoko.com/2008/11/03/how-to-
create-better-nodes/

9. The plexi is much more
fragile, and therefore the
joints has to be lighter
(usually 0,15 mm is the
maximum while 0,1 mm is
sufficient).
DESIGNING THE
JOINTS (PLEXI)
http://support.ponoko.com/entries/498833-
how-to-make-interlocking-acrylic-designs

10. To reduce the risks caused
by the fragility, usually you
can cut a round corner.
DESIGNING THE
JOINTS (PLEXI)
http://support.ponoko.com/entries/498833-
how-to-make-interlocking-acrylic-designs

11. The only inputs are
vectors or rasters. Blocks,
instances, texts, etc. have
to be exploded into
vectors before proceding.
TEXTS, BLOCKS,
ETC.

12. To reduce the time and obtain a
cleaner result you can incide the
single line characters.
SINGLE LINE FONTS

13. FILE OPTIMIZATION
Reducing the curved lines and
placing the pieces one next to the
other you can reduce the time by a
significant ammount.
http://support.ponoko.com/entries/20621872-a-
guide-to-laser-cut-line-optimisation

14. To optimize time and
quality it's better to avoid
double lines. They could
be a mistake from
copying and pasting, or
from placing two pieces
attached to each other.
THE DOUBLE
LINES

15. Before cutting it's
better to optimize the
files to reduce the
waste of material. The
optimization can be
done manually or
through nesting
softwares.
NESTING

16. When exporting the files
even the hidden or blocked
vectors are usually saved.
To be sure, export only the
selection or cancel all that
which you don't want to
cut.
EXPORTING

17. CHECK:
- that the drawing is in mm
- texts, blocks, hatches etc. exploded in vectors
- no hidden objects
- no double lines
EXPORT IN:
- dxf 2004 “natural” (in Rhino)
- it is possible to export several pages in the same file, if distanced
- the file can be exported even as a pdf, but it's a less stable process
BEFORE EXPORTING

18. LASERCUTTING 3LASERCUTTING 3
TRICKSTRICKS

19. Here how to design the
T-slots for the laser cut
Screws are described
with a code:
Mn x yy (i.e. M4x20)
It means that the
diameter is n (i.e.
4mm) and the lenght is
yy (i.e 20mm)
T slots

20. Cutting the material
with a specific pattern
it's possible to increase
a lot the flexibility of
the piece. Increasing
the flexibility mans also
to reduce the
resistance.
FOLDABLE
PATTERN

21. The behave and the
effience of this pattern
is strictly related to the
material, so it's better
to make some tests.
Too thick materials are
very hard to bend (max
thickness suggested
8mm).
THE BASIC
PATTERN
http://www.deferredprocrastination.co.uk/blog/2012/minimum-bend-radius/

22. It's possible to modify
the original patter to
increase the
resistance, flexibility or
other properties
ALTERNATIVE
PATTERNS
http://www.instructables.com/id/Curve
d-laser-bent-wood/

23. Defocusing the laser,
the material it's
warmed up, but not
melted. When it is
warm enough, it
bends, due to its
weight or because of a
mold
LASER
ORIGAMI
http://www.wired.com/2013/02/laser-origami/