Sunday, October 5, 2008

Laser-Cutting Problem Hopefully Solved

So, what I didn't understand about the laser-cutting process before, was that the machine doesn't acknowledge the "kerf" removed by the laser beam (the thickness of the cut) and make adjustments for it. In woodworking, you always acknowledge the thickness of the saw blade, and measure from that. I had never guessed that the laser-cutting world would just cut right down the middle of an object's outline. It seems so primitive! Once I understood this issue, the problem was pretty easy to solve. On my illustrator drawing, I just made an "offset path" around the objects to be cut out, half as thick as the laser kerf, and added this to the total dimension of each object. I will have a test done in the next couple of days to see if this works.

1 comment:

brilliant said...

yeah laser kerf who knew