Tips and Tricks: Making Lasercut Products with Basic Materials

hey everyone long time no see hope you're doing  all right and staying safe out there so i get   a lot of questions about what materials to use  in laser cutters so i thought i could take you   through some of the classics while i make four  different laser cut products so we're going to do   a wooden treasure chest an acrylic weekly planner  very simple leather wallet and a little paper card   animal and while obviously these aren't the only  types of materials that you can use they are some   of the most accessible and they're great to use  if you're just getting started i'll also include   all of the cut files as a free resource for you to  download just because we're not going to have time   today to cover the whole design process for each  one of these and i don't want anyone missing out   on anything so yeah let's get started with the  treasury chest and we'll begin by prepping our   materials i'm using three millimeter bamboo ply  for this one but anything from mdf to hardwood   could be used here and i'm actually going to apply  my finish of wipe on poly first because it's much   quicker to do that now before it's cut into a  bunch of little pieces after it's dry i cover   the top of the plier with masking tape to protect  it and place it in my machine over the nail bed   i prefer to use the nail bed here just because  it's less likely to cause flashbacks on the   underside of the material like the honeycomb bed  does in rd works i can bring the file in and make   sure it's scaled to the thickness of the plywood  i'm using in this case it's actually a little bit   over three millimeters so i just want to scale  it up a touch so the slots will fit in okay   and you can see that this is just a simple cut  file so long as i set my one layer here to the   correct cut settings i'm good to go if you don't  know what settings to use is no real magic trick   it's just a matter of spending some time to find  what combination of speed and power works for each   material and your machine typically i just use a  piece of scrap and work my way through the options after i remove the masking  tape it's time for assembly   in terms of product viability this is where  you'll lose a lot of time if you can charge   a high enough price for the assembled product  then that's fine but i think maybe the better   way to go about it is by providing this  type of thing as a kit set with instructions   that way the customer gets the fun of putting it  together and you saved a bunch on production costs   next up is the weekly planner this one's  made from 4.5 millimeter clear acrylic   and comes from the factory with protective sheets  applied on both sides so that makes things easy in   rd works you can see that this file is a two layer  setup because we want the text and the dividing   lines to be engraved and then the perimeter to be  cut out from the sheet just quickly the laser has   two modes of function the vector movement which  is what we saw before with a laser head follows   the lines that we've drawn and a scan movement  where the laser head moves back and forth and   fills an area in which is what we're going to  do for the text here and i want to make sure i   run the engraving first otherwise the cut piece  might move on us and mess up the text alignment   also the text is backwards because we want the  engraving to be on the reverse side of the acrylic   so that when it's being used in the real world  the whiteboard marker tip doesn't catch in it one of the things you'll immediately  notice is that running an engraving process   is less efficient time wise so use it sparingly  and make sure it's worth it for example covering   this entire sheet with engravings would  take 10 times as long on the machine   so you need to be adding 10 times the value in the  final product price now let me show you how this   product works on a mock-up piece the thing that  actually turns this into a refined item are these   little guys called standoffs and what they allow  you to do is screw the base piece into the wall   and then mount the acrylic over top giving you  a very tidy finish so while the acrylic on its   own is a little plain it can be elevated  by the simple use of the right hardware okay onto the leather wallet now so i'm using  a piece of three to four ounce vegetan leather   and once again i've used masking tape  to protect the surface from the laser   this time around i'm going to be using the  honeycomb beard which in combination with   some magnets is going to keep everything nice and  flat this is just a single layer cut file which we   know how to handle but just double check that the  laser will go through and cut out all the stitch   holes first and then cut out the piece because  the leather will move a bunch once it's cut and   that could be really unfun generally the laser  will seal the edge of the leather pretty well but   i just like to give them a quick wipe down just to  make sure i remove any residue or slight jarring   you can see the difference having the masking  tape on top makes it much easier to do this than   try and clean the leather after i apply contact  adhesive around all the stitch areas and then   press the pieces together being careful  to make sure everything's still aligned   i think leather goods made with the help of laser  cutting are extremely viable especially if you get   good at stitching while the laser will never be  as fast as punch die cutting it doesn't require   anywhere near the same tooling cost which makes  it perfect for small batch production runs   and especially prototyping this is just something  i've been dipping my toe into lately but i'm   really enjoying it and looking forward to learning  more all right the final item for today is a paper   card animal i'm hoping you can guess that this is  a kiwi bird the national icon of atero new zealand   but if you can't that's okay i realize i might  be slightly biased the cat stock i'm using is 270   gsm anything lighter than that will probably fall  apart on you for this file we're doing a two layer   setup a light low power pass just to score the  fold lines and then a pass to cut the pieces out   lasers can actually have trouble cutting extremely  lightly because laser tubes need a minimum power   output to even fire up which is sometimes more  power than what you ideally want so a little   trick here is to set the laser slightly out of  focus to reduce the power for scoring these lines like the treasure chest i think this would work  best to sell as a kit set with instructions   as the assembly is rather time consuming and a  lot of the enjoyment isn't putting it together   so a great opportunity again to  kill two birds with one stone   though kiwis are an endangered species so you  you probably don't want to wet it like that   i know none of these items are particularly life  changing but i'm hoping they help spark some ideas   of your own if you're interested in building  your own laser cutter like this guy behind me   i've got a whole build series showing you how  to do that which you can check out i'd also just   like to apologize for not uploading anything for  so long as i know you can appreciate it's been   difficult to prioritize making videos with all  the challenges we've been facing but i am hoping   to do some more in the coming months also also you  might notice the background's changed a little bit   and short story short i'm just listening a  small corner of space from a local workshop so   if you hear any other noises or anything happening  that's all that is so yeah that's it for me today   and uh i will catch you on the next one  hopefully a little sooner than last time

Channel: Further Fabrication

Views: 30,181

Keywords: laser, laser cutter, laser engraver, laser cutting, diy laser, co2 laser, homemade, laser engraving, diy, cnc, how to make a laser, laser engraving machine, arduino, homemade laser, cnc laser cutter, best laser cutter projects, chinese laser cutter, diy 40w laser cutter, diy laser cutter machine kit, cheap, glowforge, buildlog, What is a laser, how does a laser work, laser cutting 101, begininer, basics, what is a laser cutter, how lasers work, make money, money, Business, selling

Id: y_wWDYkwJOI

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021