Project 2: Laser Cutting a Tool Tote - Morgan Jones
This now was the week where I officially dedicated myself to building my aircraft. It did not happen in this project, but the official preparations were made, will will be described in depth. On the 12th of February, we were tasked to make the same tool tote, but using the 2D Laser Printers. Fortunately, this took a lot less machining, which allowed for some more creative design.
Design and Fabrication Process
The first thing that I had to do was change the thickness dimensions of our original machined tool tote from 0.71in to the panel thickness that the laser cutter uses (0.125in). I also added some flanges to connect the cut pieces together. Making the changes caused some minor geometrical issues in the CAD model, so I needed to fix those. Furthermore, I added an additional part onto the previous design, which was the aircraft stands that will be used to hold up the model airplane that I plan to make near the end of the class. This was how I officially sealed myself into planning to make this model aircraft. The laser cutter was very quick to cut out my parts. The process was very quick. However, what comes next was definitely not as fast.
After cutting out the parts, I wanted to laser engrave a picture onto the walls of the tote like previously. This time, I used pictures of blueprints from a concept aircraft. The engraving took a total of 5-6 HOURS. This was because of two reasons:
1. the images were highly detailed, as shown below.
2. I used the HD quality option, which, while making the engravement look nicer, takes and awful long amount of time. Was it worth it? I would not say so, given my time, but I definitely could have made more time for myself.
Lastly, I put all the pieces together. I used some fast drying wood glue and the clamps to attach and hold the flanges together. Additionally, I used wing nuts to fasten the aircraft stands to the sides.
One again my tool tote came out the way that I wanted it in the CAD Model. The accuracy of the laser made the shapes perfect to fit in. The aircraft stands came out very well too. However, I wish I spent more time making a more aesthetic design for it. The engravements could have come out a bit better, if I was more strategic on which laser cutter to use, but it doesn't bother me too much. Unlike the previous tote, I was able to get the walls to fit perfectly flushed.
One thing that I would like to talk about is the engravement process, which was quite tedious. First, you will see in some of the end photos that some of the engravements are more bolder than others. I believe that the glowforge sacrifices speed of printing for accuracy (which is why the bottom design came out very nicely), and vice versa for the Zing printer (bolded lines can be seen on the other parts). It was the glowforge that took a tedious 4.5 hours to fully make the raster. So, for future practice, I will plan to use the Zing printer for larger designs, and the glowforge for smaller designs. Nonetheless, I think that these obstacles and problems I encountered helped me gain a stronger understanding of how to use the laser cutters. They are very convenient machines, and I will like use them again for fabricating my aircraft!
Acknowledgments
Once again, I would like to thank both Ryan Hodge and Andrew Koob for giving me extremely good advice and suggestions for some of the obstacles that I ran into, and Dr. Terrell for taking some awesome photos of me which I used in my blog! I also want to thank my many classmates who showed me really helpful methods for putting the tote together.
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