Session 40 – Series Finale: Here’s What You Can Do Now!

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects

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The Concise RDWorks Learning Lab with Russ Sadler.

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Session 40 Series Finale: What you can do now!

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Well, here we are at Session 40. That’s a lot of chapters in a book, and I could never have put any of this stuff into writing.

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You have now understood a lot about the technology and a lot about the techniques of using a laser machine.

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Today is the last session, and I’m going to make it a bonus long session because we’re going to pull together lots and

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lots of different things that I’ve been talking about during the previous 39 sessions.

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Now I’m going to edit together some projects that I’ve been working on from time to time that

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I think will interest you and will show you what this machine is actually capable of doing.

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It’s really only limited by your artistic talent, of which I have very little engineering skills, which I’ve got a modest amount of.

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And your ability to pinch somebody else’s idea and adapt them.

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There’s a whole world out there on the big WWW if you just go and Google certain subjects, and I’ll show you a few examples.

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Now, for me, this session is very simple because I’ve already done most of the work.

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I’m just going to edit pieces of video together.

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That might not actually make sense when you look at them in the round, but hey, just realize they are separate pieces of video and they’re not done now.

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But before we start, I want to show you some of the things that you are going to see in this video, which I haven’t shown you before.

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One of the things is obviously the table. Now I’ve mentioned this honeycomb.

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Sometimes it has its uses and other times it’s nothing but a pain. Fortunately, I can lift mine off and I can replace it with a steel sheet.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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16 gauge mild steel that is, it looks a bit disreputable, but hey, it gets all sort of muck and rubbish on it and you can clean it with sandpaper.

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Emery Paper, 3M Cloths your orbital sander.

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You can you can clean in whatever way you want.

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Most of the time, if you keep it clean with some acetone, wipe it off as soon as you put damage on it, it remains fairly good.

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Now, the reason why I’m showing you this is because you’ve already seen one of the ways in which I can support materials on here.

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I’ve got these stainless steel strips. Always use them this way, so that your airflow passes nice and cleanly through there.

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There is one small problem with these, and that is that even though it’s a long way off, this surface here can produce a reflection.

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So at some stage, I’m going to stick to a little piece of wood across the top here or a piece of acrylic just to absorb the energy.

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And I’ll show you what I mean. And it’s these things. Now,

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these may look a little bit disreputable. Because, hey, look, they’ve absorbed the excess energy that comes through the cut.

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They don’t catch fire. They just absorb the energy because it’s at such a low level.

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What you’ll note is that over time, they will tend to buckle and bend a little bit.

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They will not be straight. But that’s one of the reasons why we’ve got these rubber feet on the back so

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that they can dish and not cause any problems. They’ve got a whole load of holes in here.

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And they’re designed to take stainless steel,

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dowel pins. And the idea is you drop the dowel pins through the holes and the dowel pins sit upright,

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but because they’re referenced off of this back surface here, they will all sit at the same height.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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So it doesn’t matter about the curvature in the plate because the plate is not controlling the overall height of these pins.

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So two advantages.

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Number one, if you’re using paper, you’ll probably have to use this sort of support to give you a nice uniform control of the surface.

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So I will put a reference to my video on the RDWork’s learning channel where I manufacture

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these. And I’ll also provide drawings for all the projects that you’re now going to see.

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You may recognize this machine as something that you possess. It’s a K40.

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Well, it was a K40 before I started remodeling it.

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It’s now got a complete digital control panel and system inside.

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It’s got my high speed head on it. It’s got my, it’s been completely revamped and remodeled.

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It’s nothing like a K40 except the frame.

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And the reason why I’m just showing you this is because this laser machine that you’ve got has got endless uses.

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I might be taking this machine to craft fairs, and as such, I need something which is easily portable.

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Well, the machine itself is not particularly heavy, and I can carry it on my own.

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But to hang all, to hang all this stuff on the back and it starts to get very messy.

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So what I’ve done here is made a lift off service module that just plugs onto the back of the machine there.

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It’s got the water reservoir in it.

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It’s got a fan, it’s got the cooling system, it’s got some ductwork that will come out the end here and it’s got air assist sitting on the end there.

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A little temperature meter for telling us what the temperature of the water is in the tank, manufactured on the laser, manufactured on the laser.

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All this stuff just plugs on that and locks and there we are.

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I’ve got a closed ventilation system here, an extraction system, which blows out down the duct.

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And separate from that, we’ve got our cooling system and our air system. Now,

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this all lifts off so that I can easily transport it around.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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But the point that I’m really making here is, all this is manufactured from six millimeter acrylic.

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You’re only limited on this machine by your engineering ability and your imagination.

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So that’s a project that I’m partway through at the moment.

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I’ve still got a little bit more work to do on that before I start issuing the videos of what I’ve done on that.

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In the last session, we demonstrated a very simple project of cutting and engraving mixed onto the same project.

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Well, here we’ve got something similar. This is drawing and cutting on the same project.

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This little design is just one of many that you can buy for literally half of nothing on Etsy.

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You can download the files and they come in all sorts of formats. I mean, this is an excellent value for money project.

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So I shall not be giving you the file for this. You can go and buy for just literally two or three dollars a whole package of these designs.

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There are hundreds of these designs available at this store called LASERCOL DESIGNS on Etsy.

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So I’m going to show you the complete project from Square one.

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Well, I’ve got RDWorks open and let’s import. We’ve got a folder here, which is called Christmas houses.

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The simple one, I think, is house one. And when we click into house one. We find that we get files for all sorts of different thickness materials.

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I’m going to be using three millimetre material because I’m going to use 3mm birch plywood.

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House one and we get the choice here of DXF File, scalable graphics or Adobe Illustrator.

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I always use the DXF file. So once I’ve imported it. It shows me different colours.

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Black is cut and green is drawn so we can delete the text, delete, delete.

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And if I just click on this, I can look at the top here and I can see that it is 343 by 160.

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Well, 343 is more than an A4 size.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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I’m just going to draw an A4. Now an A4 is 297 wide and 210 tall.

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That’s my material. So I’ve got to rearrange these pieces so they all fit on my material.

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So from being a disaster, it all of a sudden fits onto an A4 sheet.

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Now, I don’t know whether you’ve ever done this before, but you could leave your outline on there.

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Okay, so now we’ve got a blue outline.

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So when we put our piece of material on the machine, we need to know where we’re going to start, where we are we going to put

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our head to get everything to fit on this sheet. And that’s what this green mark is.

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That’s our start point. That’s our head start point. But we do not want the blue to cut.

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So what we do? We go to the blue layer: is output?

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No. In other words, we want to leave it there, but we don’t want anything to happen.

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So you don’t need to do anything with the parameters. You’ve just switched it off.

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It will record where it needs to be for the start point. A laser beam is always a cutting beam when you set it focused onto the surface.

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You can make it cut a lot less. By decreasing the power significantly, it makes the beam softer,

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but it still might not be enough to produce a dark line. For surface marking with a cut line.

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You need to change the focus now if you haven’t got a controllable Z on your machine.

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Then don’t worry, because there are ways of messing around with the program to enable you to do just that.

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And that’s what I’m going to show you now. So although this is going to be a cut, this is a drawing layer.

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The green layer. Output? Yes. Speed?. Well, we can sort the speed out at a later date, but 80 is probably reasonable and power.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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That’s another interesting question. It really depends. I think that probably we don’t need much more than probably 30 percent.

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I’ve got a 70 watt laser here. I’ve got no idea what you’ve got, so you’ll have to play with these numbers.

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But the principle is that it’s relatively fast 80mm a second and relatively low power 30.

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And then we’re going to do the black layer. Now, the black layer is a cut layer.

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It depends on what your machine is.

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I’m probably going to be using a one and a half inch lens, which is quite a, it should give me quite a fine cut line and quite a fine drawing line,

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which I can play with the focus to get a nice dark line. Is output?

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Well, the answer will be yes, but for the first time round, we’re going to say no.

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Because what I want to do, is to run this program twice. Without moving the work.

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You put the work into a corner somewhere so that your sheet doesn’t move. You run

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it once to do your engraving and then you reset the focus to do your cutting.

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Setting it like this. Let’s set the speed to…. I would be able to easily cut 25 millimetres a second and my power on my machine,

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I can run it at 95 per cent. I don’t know what your maximum power is.

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So you really want to run it with maximum power and as fast as possible to get a clean cut. With RDWorks,

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when I came up here to handle, there’s something called Cut Optimize.

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Now I remove all these ticks, so there’s nothing in this cut optimize box.

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I don’t want one layer to cut in preference to another layer because I choose that myself.

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I do all the ordering manually because I found that both this and LightBurn,

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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sometimes you get unpredictable results. OK, so now we’ll go into this program and we’ll do some ordering.

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Now what we can do, we can mark. And if you look carefully, you’ll see how I’m marking this. I’ve not caught the whole of the outside shape here.

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And I’ve just turned all those cuts to red, not the outside, just the centre cuts. So I’m going to come up here now and I’m going to go to group.

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Now I’m going to do the same for this one. I’m going to mark everything except the outside shape – group.

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Let’s zoom in on this one. I’m going to catch everything except the top of that….

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Green. And you see, that just the red bits have turned.

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I’m now going to press the shift key down. And I’m going to click on these little black pieces here,

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one at a time. I could hopefully catch them all by not doing the green.

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There we go. I’ve caught them all in one. And that slot there. So that’s all the holes in that one.

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And I’m going to make those a group as well. Now I can let go of the shift key. And if I click on one of those, look, they all become

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a group. Now, I’ve got to do the same for this one. So let me miss the green, but catch all the black.

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Hold down the shift key and we’ll try and do the same for this.

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We’ll just catch the squares. We’ve made them read.

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We’ve just caught the squares and we’ve let some of the green outside, which means we shall only turn them,

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we shall only turn the black bits red. So that’s a group which we can set, a group. So we catch that little bit there.

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Red. Hold down the shift key, click on that star.

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Click on that star. Click on that star. And that one.

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And then we should be able to do we do, no we’ll do each of these separately as well.

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Click Click, Click Click.

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This is a bit tedious, but it’s very important that you set these into groups like this.

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And that one. So that’s all the holes in that one, set as a group.

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OK, now we’ve finished grouping things. We can come up here to this little symbol beside the preview box.

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This is the list of how we’re going to process these parts.

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So now we’re going to set the processing order. Because this list here is all over the place,

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as far as processing orders concerned. We want it to cut or draw in the order that we want it to do. So,

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we’ll draw the green lines first. And then we need to remember that we’ve got to cut the inner shapes; black before we do the outer shape; black.

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And then we do the inner shape here. Outer.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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Then we do here. Inner shapes / outer.

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Just an outer shape. Inner shapes, Outer shapes.

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Inner shapes. Outer shapes.

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Inner shapes outer shapes. And you are going to say, but there’s one left. The one left is this outline,

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which is not going to be drawn, but it’s got to be part of the cut list. OK, so that’s the job done.

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We’re basically ready to rock and roll now. You you can use the same focus setting for both cutting and drawing,

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but it’s not as successful as breaking the job up and making the drawing darker.

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File, save as. We were in the 3mm file, so we may as well save it in the same group. House One program Pro .

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OK, so I don’t know what you, what equipment you’ve got on your machine, but I’m going to be using a cutting nozzle.

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It’s a cutting nozzle because it’s got a very small hole in the end. Using an inch and a half lens with a nozzle like this is a bit of a problem,

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because normally you clamp the lens back up inside here with a clamp ring.

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But because the lens is such a short focal length, the focal point will be up inside the nozzle if I do that.

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So what we do,

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we’ve got a special – this nozzle has got a ring in the end to allow you to take an 18 millimetre lens and do that, to place the lens in there.

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And then what I can do is place a o- ring on top. Before I do that, I’ve got an empty lens tube here.

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I’m going to put the clamp ring in, that would normally clamp the lens in. And wind that in about a quarter of an inch,

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maybe eight millimetres, something like that.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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Okay. And now what we can do, we’ll come back to here.

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We’ll put our lens in the top there. Our O-ring on top of that and then we’ll pop the lens tube on top of that?

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Now if we screw the lens tube down gently. We shalld find that before we get fully onto this shoulder here,

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we feel the o- ring just beginning to bite and squash, and that’s clamped the lens.

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And now I’m going to put my air assist on. Now on this machine, although I have got automatic air assist control and I can program it. For this occasion,

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I’m going to show you, you might not have that. So what I’ve got, I’ve got a little ball valve on here, which controls my air assist.

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So now the air assist is fully on.

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And off. First of all, I need to find out where the focal point.

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And I’m just going to set that up to a two millimetre gap. The focus, the focal point is too deep into the material at the moment.

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And what this program does, as you can probably see over here, it draws a series of lines.

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And it enables me to find the best focus for various functions.

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I’m not going to turn my extraction on. So we’re going to get a little bit of smoke. But we can live with that.

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OK, let’s take a look at the results. So that’s effectively two mm gap.

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Three four five six mm gap. So it looks as though it’s two three four millimetres is the thinnest line, which is the best line for cutting.

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But it’s a very thin, faint line, which we don’t want for engraving.

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We want something that’s probably. Like that!

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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OK, so that’s two three, four five six.

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So draw equals six mm and cut four mm.

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I’ve got a little test program in here, which basically is a twenty five mm square and I’ll set the speeds to twenty five and power ninety five.

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So we’ll do a cut test now – four millimetres for cutting. So I’ll now turn some extraction on.

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Twenty five is quite clean. I’m going to take that down to 22.

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Just to be sure. OK. Now something,

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that I haven’t done. You’ve seen now it just falls out. Air Assist. I must make sure that my air assist is on.

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Twenty two is our cut speed and draw, first of all, we need to change drawing. We’ll

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take virtually all of the air assist off.

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We just need enough air blowing through there to make sure the lens doesn’t fog up and then we’ll change this from four

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to 6mm. Set the power to 25 per cent and the speed to 80.

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We’ll see what our square draws like. It’s not particularly dark, except in the corners.

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Now I will explain that problem to you in a minute. We can make the lines a bit darker by increasing the power, so we go up to 40 percent.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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OK, now they’re quite nice, dark lines. But the corners are burnt. Usually you don’t play around with max / min power.

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But when you’re doing drawing like this, Min power becomes very important.

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But you have to set Min power up very, very carefully.

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So once you’ve got your basic speed sorted out, which you must do first and then what we’re going to do is something different,

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we’re going to drop the power right the way down now to something like about maybe 10 percent. We’ll go back to our parameters. We’re

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going to drop the minimum power. Down to 10.

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Look at the difference. No hint of anything in the corners, 10 percent might be the right number.

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But what we’ve got to do is to drop the power down to maybe 6 percent.

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If you keep reducing the power far enough, you’ll find that there’s a little gap appears in the corners here,

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and that means you’ve gone too far with your minimum power.

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You need to make sure the gap is closed, but that gap will happen at different powers, depending on the speed you’re using.

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You have to get your colour right before you start fiddling with the minimum power.

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So minimum power looks to be good at round about maybe eight, nine or 10 percent.

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We go much more than 10 or 12 percent. We shall start getting back to this burnt corner condition.

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So you get rid of your burnt corners by playing with minimum power.

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And obviously, once you’ve experimented and got these numbers on your machine, they apply to everything for this material.

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But of course you change the material to maybe MDF or HDF and these numbers will need to be reset. If it doesn’t matter if the back gets marked,

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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then it’s okay to use this material for this job because you’re interested in the front, all the damaged pieces will be inside your house.

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Now the problem with this material. Is it’s got a tendency to not be flat.

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So. How do we deal with that?

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Well, normally you’ll find that there’s some curvature on it. And in this instance, it looks as though most of the curvature is over

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on that corner there. Now, if you remember from our drawing, up at that corner, we’re not doing anything.

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There’s nothing taking place up there. So what I can do, is I can pop a magnet up

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there. And that will hold that corner down, but this corner here, I can hold that corner down with a magnet,

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but what I’ve got to do now is be very careful that I steer clear of anything in this corner,

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so we go back to our program. So we’ve now jiggled all those around to make room for a magnet in the bottom there.

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And our big magnet up the top here. So remember for this first operation. We’ve

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got the focus to 6mm, we need our air assist very, very low.

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And now we can run. Space for the space is.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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OK.

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Now, we’re not going to touch anything other than we’re going to set the focus back down to four millimetres.

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We’re going to turn the air assist on full. And now we’re going to go to our program. And at the moment.

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The program says green layer? Yes. Cut layer?

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No. Double click on the Yes, click click, and it turns it to no. Double click on the no click click and it turns it to Yes.

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Now we’re ready to run again. One of the things with plywood, as you can see just here, how all of a sudden I’ve got a black

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piece just here. That’s because there’s an imperfection in the plywood just there.

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There’s an air gap. And the cut has stopped. I will be able to break it out, I’m sure.

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But when we look, you’ll see what I mean, there’ll be a definite problem with some sort of… Can you see the air gap in there between the layers?

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That’s completely messed up the cut. You could just run over these if you want just to take this small amount of damage off the surface.

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I’ve just got a 180 grit sanding pad here.

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Now we should be able to just quickly assemble this. Back,

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front, they fit nicely together, a nice snug fits. And that one.

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Snaps together nicely if we get the fits, if we get all the cuts just right.

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If you really want it secure, what you do is just run around underneath here with a little blob and PVA glue.

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Just run it around that joint at the bottom there and that will more or less hold it all together.

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But you can equally well just run a blob of glue down the inside edge of the roof.

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Just those few glue lines will lock everything up. On my RDWorks Learning Lab channel, I usually do a bit of a special program at Christmas.

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What we’re going to see now is a couple of projects from one of those Christmas programs. Welcome to this Christmas edition 2019 of the RDWorks

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Learning lab, yep. I know I’m not going to be able to see what I’m doing in here, so I think we probably ought to have a few lights on.

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Well, that’s better. At least I can now see what I’m doing when I eat my piece stollen.

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And then wash it down casually, with some very nice, red wine.

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Now, I think that means I shouldn’t really be doing anything seriously with this machine tonight, but hey.

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This is not a proper factory, and there’s no health and safety involved here.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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Only my own. So let’s just clear the decks so I can get to the machine and we might do one or two interesting things today.

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Now everything we do today is actually serious. There’s no joking around today.

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at all. [small cough] Now, you may or may not have seen these things on something like Pinterest.

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Umm. Basically, they’re called Plop Plops.

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No idea of why. Perhaps it means something different in a different language.

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But these are very simple to make, they look very complex, but they’re actually very simple to make.

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And I’m going to show you how to make one of these because these are excellent for hanging on your Christmas tree.

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Now for this one, I printed a load of stars on a sheet of A4 card,

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and then I cut the shapes out and you can see it looks quite attractive, so you don’t have to make it with patterns on it.

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You can make it plain. You can hand decorate them.

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Now, as you can see, my pin table has had a bit of a hard life over the past couple of years, but it’s still holding up perfectly.

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Okay, it’s not warped or bent.

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We can’t really cut card on anything but a pin table because we need lots of support for such a floppy, flimsy material.

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OK, so go ahead and cut it on your honeycomb table if you wish.

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But I’m afraid you might get a few odd marks on it that you’re not expecting. So there we are, we’ve put a bit of support

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around the outside of the paper. There we go, look we’ve just got a random arrangement of pins inside the frame now.

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Now, normally when you get a piece of paper, you’ll find that sometimes the edges are curled up.

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Well, that’s bad news.

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So what you want to do is put the curly edges downwards and in the middle of the paper, usually the weight of the paper will hold it flat.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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I hope I’ve got the cutting set to operate towards the top end of the pre ionization zone, what I call hissy mode.

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So we shall find out whether the cut is quiet or hissy. Sounds a bit hissy.

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You’ll really hear the hiss when it does the straight line cuts. There we go.

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That’s definitely hissy mode.

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Now you see why you want plenty of support. You don’t want those pieces to fall out.

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It might seem silly, but that’s all that’s required to make that lovely, complicated shape.

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Three strips all exactly the same. Now, if we look very carefully on these strips, you’ll see there’s a little marker on one end,

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a little pair of marks and they’re basically, normally you would glue this together.

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But before you do anything, what I suggest you do is this. You pre bend.

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These pieces here. Along the fold lines.

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Just make sure that you crease the ends. OK, now I’m not going to glue. These, I think, are big enough that I can use and get in to use a stapler,

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which is instant rather than waiting for glue to dry.

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We just need a little bit of oiling.

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I actually very rarely drink, but Christmas time is an interesting time when I do break that rule because I’m not driving and I’m not operating machinery.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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What we’re going to do? We’re going to turn this into a little loop to start with,

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and we’re going to put the ends so that they match up with these little cuts and then with a bit of luck,

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we should be able to get in there at an angle. And put a staple in. Now I’ve only got this big stapler,

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but if you’ve got a little mini stapler so much, the better. We make two of these to start with.

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Now you don’t have to worry about them being staples because they don’t show they’re going to be hidden inside.

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Now, the first thing that we do and how do I do this? I think we put them together like this, we use two of them, andput them together.

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Now if you look carefully how I’m assembling these, you’ll see that the crease mark here roughly matches the crease mark on this one and this one.

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Now, this third one pokes through here and back through the other side.

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And bend things out of the way sufficiently. So that we can staple that one as well.

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So as I said, this is not the best stapler to be using. But it works.

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OK, so we’ve got two of these now, where the the corners line up.

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Now what we’ve got to do is to lose this piece here with the staples on it, inside.

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This is a little bit tricky because you’ve got to bend this, you’ve got to feed this through and pull this piece out and feed this piece in.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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It’s a bit tricky. These will actually bend themselves into position, but it’s best to get them more or less lined up.

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Before you start like that. As you can see we’ve got all three corners roughly in the right place.

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If you’re going to use this as a Christmas decoration and you want to hang it on your Christmas tree,

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then now is the time when you want to do something like this.

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Tie your ribbon. You only need a knot on it because this will close up very, very tightly here on the corner.

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So what we do is slide this in through that corner there.

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Like that? OK. And now we will start teasing these things in like this.

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That one and then the one opposite. And then one.

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And the one opposite. As I said, you may have to jiggle this around a little bit to get your corners quite neat.

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Then this last one, I shall have to just,

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take the corners out. Check and tidy them all up, neaten the corners off.

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And there we are, a very nice bauble for your Christmas tree. That’s a plain red one.

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But you could decorate these however you like.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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So hopefully that’s taken the mystery out of what looks like a very complex piece of cardboard engineering.

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So from one of my expeditions, when I went cadging for some acrylic, I got these off cuts, which are 200 millimetres square.

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They’re not much use for many things, but occasionally you come across a use for them.

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And now I’m going to use them for a little interesting job.

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Now I could take the pin table off, use 10 millimetre spacing blocks.

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But hey, as I’ve got the table up, I may as well use it. Just set the focus to six millimetres, just move the material into position – square.

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There’s my shadow, so it’s roughly square with the shadow. Now, at the moment, I’m not going to tell you what we’re doing.

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We’re going to watch it unfold like a drama. You can see how the smoke is drifting out the front.

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What we need to do, is just close the lid a little bit. Now you can clearly see how the smoke is being drawn away underneath the job.

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Now, the pieces are not falling out, not because they’re supported by pins,

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but because I put little bridges on the job, so that the pieces will stay in the sheet.

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So with a bit of luck, I should just be able to twist these, like that and there’s my bridges just there.

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Look. A quick twist, and they will just come out. Now the most difficult part of this job is doing this, especially if you haven’t got fingernails.

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I have got fingernails, although they’re a little bit short at the moment. You need to scratch away the corner to get the film to start lifting.

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Don’t going to the local beauty salon and ask from nail extensions because they might look at you a bit strangely.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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Now, this is supposed to be normally 3mm, but in fact, it always seems to come in at 2.8 millimetres.

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When I draw the pieces for this, I make the slots.

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2.8. Okay. They will cut slightly oversize,

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but it does mean to say that I’ve got a small amount of tolerance there in case the material goes slightly over two point eight.

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OK. And now we’ll do the next one, but this time I’m going to cheat slightly.

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I’m going to take the cover film off the back, because at least by taking off now.

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It comes off in one nice big piece, and the chances are, of damaging the underneath are very, very slight. Debris will be on the top surface.

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And with this, I’ve got a couple of bridges just here and here, so I should be able to twist this out as well.

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There we go. Look. Well, let’s see what we’ve done so far, shall we?

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We’re going to slip that piece in there like that. And we’re going to put that piece in there. Like that.

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And now we are going to do something similar. OK, so now we’ve got two of them.

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But the good news is. They fit together like that.

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OK, we’re scoring some lines now.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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You can hear I’m in hissy mode as well. Now I’ve put the power up, so consequently, it’s not hissing.

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Now, if I allowed the lines to intersect, I would have to go through this peeling off 16 times. Now,

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I hope what’s going to happen here is I’m going to be able to pull through the middle here.

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And get into the next sections without ruining my fingernails as I pull off the adjacent section.

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So now we’ll see the story start to build.

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Now we’ve got the power running about right, because we’re not producing any huge deep marks in the base here.

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There’s not much power being absorbed or coming through the cut.

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It probably means I could run another two or three millimetres a second faster and still cut, but I’m not going to change it.

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So that one was number two. Number three.

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Number four. Apart from the fact they don’t distort as easily,

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we can move them around to suit. What I’ve got to do now is use a piece of large material to do the job and I don’t want to cut it so.

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I can sit that in there. So as you can see, the material is just the right size.

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You’ll see these just literally pop out. Here’s what we’ve created.

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It’s an after dinner game, that everybody. Well, you can only play it two at a time or you can play in teams and debate.

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It’s noughts and crosses. But it’s noughts and crosses with the difference because this is 3D noughts and crosses.

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Four by four. So as you see, the combinations are pretty amazing.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

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You’ve got four across the top four diagonal, but you’ve got four on any plane.

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But of course, you’ve also got this one. Look, there, there, there and there a diagonal through.

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So there’s four diagonals through as well. Now we’ve got diagonals down here like that, verticals, horizontals.

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There are all sorts of combinations, ways of getting four in a line.

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So this is not the sort of game you want to play after you’ve had too many glasses of wine.

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So make sure you start playing this with four year olds so you don’t embarrass yourself.

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OK, now this looks quite a nice piece of kit, that you can leave assembled up.

349
00:50:42,230 –> 00:51:06,830
I mean, it does all come apart. So we can flat pack it.

350
00:51:06,830 –> 00:51:12,740
Problem is, we don’t have a box for it. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make a box.

351
00:51:12,740 –> 00:51:21,570
Now we’re going to use a couple of pieces of Baltic birch plywood. The problem with this stuff is.

352
00:51:21,570 –> 00:51:30,120
So it doesn’t sit very flat. It’s got a tendency to curl up, and even if I turn it over, these ends will be up.

353
00:51:30,120 –> 00:51:36,570
So we’re going to have to adopt a slightly different strategy for cutting this.

354
00:51:36,570 –> 00:51:47,110
And this time we’re going to use some little magnets. Now I happen to know.

355
00:51:47,110 –> 00:52:00,330
By looking at my drawing, approximately where I can place those magnets where they’re not going to get cut.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

356
00:52:00,330 –> 00:52:07,920
When I place them on the magnets. What we have top look at is whether the middle comes up in the air.

357
00:52:07,920 –> 00:52:17,590
If it does, we’ve got it the wrong way round. So we’ll put these.

358
00:52:17,590 –> 00:52:24,520
They sort themselves out, as you can see. Now, the dishing is that way and I’ve pulled the corners down.

359
00:52:24,520 –> 00:52:29,530
So the middle is no longer raised, it’s pulling down on the magnet that’s in the middle there.

360
00:52:29,530 –> 00:52:36,960
Now I know that in the middle I’m not going to be cutting. I’m going to be cutting around the edge around the outside of these magnets.

361
00:52:36,960 –> 00:52:50,980
I’m cutting that at about 35 mm a second. And this is using about 65 watts. Now, I’ve put some tags on these components,

362
00:52:50,980 –> 00:53:06,580
but that one looks as though it didn’t hold. This one has, the tag is at the top there and at the bottom there.

363
00:53:06,580 –> 00:53:11,260
And that’s done a good job of holding that one in. And this one as well,

364
00:53:11,260 –> 00:53:34,870
has got a couple of tags on it just here and here, which is why I’m able to pivot it like this.

365
00:53:34,870 –> 00:53:45,280
And that’s why you want your pieces bridged in so they don’t fall into all that debris that’s there. That’s condensed fumes from cutting the wood.

366
00:53:45,280 –> 00:53:56,360
Now normally I can just tap these pieces together. The fit is actually very good.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

367
00:53:56,360 –> 00:54:21,220
So let’s organize the right pieces. We’ve got to put the front and the back on first.

368
00:54:21,220 –> 00:54:24,940
If we had put the sides on first, we couldn’t have got these tangs in.

369
00:54:24,940 –> 00:54:28,720
You have to be very careful about how you assemble things up when you’re doing this job.

370
00:54:28,720 –> 00:54:42,220
Now what I’m going to do at the moment is to put the front edge on first.

371
00:54:42,220 –> 00:54:56,050
And then we can do the middle. And I’m purposely going to leave the back edge open.

372
00:54:56,050 –> 00:55:04,060
Now we do the same on the other side. OK, so I’ve let the back edge open now, purposely so that what I can do,

373
00:55:04,060 –> 00:55:12,950
is slide the lid in. Otherwise I won’t be able to assemble the lid. There we go, get the lid in.

374
00:55:12,950 –> 00:55:30,340
On this side. That’s the hinge in and then we do the same on the other side. There we go,

375
00:55:30,340 –> 00:55:38,190
no glue. We have a little clip at the front here, which if you push the top.

376
00:55:38,190 –> 00:55:48,070
You can lift the lid undone. err, 16 32.

377
00:55:48,070 –> 00:55:54,580
We need 64 counters in there. Oh yeah, maybe.

378
00:55:54,580 –> 00:56:00,790
Yeah, they will go in there and there’s your afternoon entertainment.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

379
00:56:00,790 –> 00:56:13,600
There are literally thousands of ideas that you can see and either create for yourself or buy sometimes, off of Big WWW.

380
00:56:13,600 –> 00:56:18,730
I mean, I’ve just put a search in Google here, which says laser cut projects.

381
00:56:18,730 –> 00:56:26,380
And literally, there are thousands of things that you can go and

382
00:56:26,380 –> 00:56:32,770
make. You can be more specific, you can put laser cut cards. You can put laser cut houses, you can put laser cut

383
00:56:32,770 –> 00:56:44,630
whatever you like. One of the things that I looked at was laser cut lamps and look you get all these lovely lampshades and

384
00:56:44,630 –> 00:56:51,770
something that fascinated me was the problem of this one.

385
00:56:51,770 –> 00:56:59,510
As you can see, these are sort of like stitched together or held together with various little clips.

386
00:56:59,510 –> 00:57:06,380
But I decided I would like to manufacture something like this without those gaps in it.

387
00:57:06,380 –> 00:57:11,000
Let’s just see what that one is? Again, look, you see that one has got these.

388
00:57:11,000 –> 00:57:15,140
It’s got these little clips on the edge, which hold the pieces apart.

389
00:57:15,140 –> 00:57:21,130
I decided that I would like to make one where all the joints were perfect.

390
00:57:21,130 –> 00:57:29,720
But that means that you’ve got to do very special angular cuts on each one of these faces.

391
00:57:29,720 –> 00:57:33,650
To make sure they all jointo together perfectly.

392
00:57:33,650 –> 00:57:41,750
But the engineering challenge of how I would cut mitre joints with the laser machine was fascinating to me.

393
00:57:41,750 –> 00:57:53,720
It must be possible. I’m going to show you a short video of the basic stages I went through to create one of those pentagonal type tiled lampshades.

394
00:57:53,720 –> 00:57:59,630
It’s a serious challenge, but all the drawings are there if you want to have a go at it for yourself.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

395
00:57:59,630 –> 00:58:04,250
I’m working on a little project that involves putting pentagons together,

396
00:58:04,250 –> 00:58:11,840
so one of the problems obviously that I have, is cutting the edges so that they all mitre together nicely.

397
00:58:11,840 –> 00:58:16,310
I’m actually using the laser machine a bit like a mill.

398
00:58:16,310 –> 00:58:25,100
First of all, I’ve got some square sided blanks that I’ve already cut out.

399
00:58:25,100 –> 00:58:43,950
They drop into that fixture. You’ve got a 36 degree angle on there.

400
00:58:43,950 –> 00:58:51,690
Well the next thing we do is to tape them together. Make sure all the joints

401
00:58:51,690 –> 00:59:00,020
are nice and tight and we now get one of our assembly jigs and we drop this into it.

402
00:59:00,020 –> 00:59:06,950
And we make sure that these corners all line up with the top of the jig.

403
00:59:06,950 –> 00:59:15,080
Now it’s going to be difficult to put glue along these edges. So what I’m going to do is to have some glue out here and paint it on.

404
00:59:15,080 –> 00:59:20,360
I put that glue along there first that will run into the joint and I’m using a plastic

405
00:59:20,360 –> 00:59:27,170
backing sheet here. A polythene sheet so that I can basically paint along the edge.

406
00:59:27,170 –> 00:59:31,940
Well we’re now ready to drop it into the fixture and squeeze it down.

407
00:59:31,940 –> 00:59:32,450
As we said,

408
00:59:32,450 –> 00:59:45,890
we need to make sure that every single corner here lines up with the top of this fixture that will guarantee that we’ve got the right shape.

409
00:59:45,890 –> 00:59:50,750
Because we’re going to make another half. And it’s got to match this half, exactly.

410
00:59:50,750 –> 01:00:00,640
So now we’ve got the, now we’ve got the glue in.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

411
01:00:00,640 –> 01:00:11,290
We can very carefully tease out the excess. This will all dry off and disappear to nothing.

412
01:00:11,290 –> 01:00:17,080
Now I’ll let that dry, and then we’ll come back and look at it in about an hour or two.

413
01:00:17,080 –> 01:00:23,410
Now for the bottom unit. I’ve, this centre section here.

414
01:00:23,410 –> 01:00:33,910
I’ve been around the edges of this centre section with a wax candle and I’ve put a wax coating all around this bottom edge. All around this centre

415
01:00:33,910 –> 01:00:41,350
section edges here, because I don’t want the glue to stick to this centre piece. Because I want to remove the bottom after it’s assembled,

416
01:00:41,350 –> 01:00:49,040
but I need the bottom in as an assembly template. So all we’re going to do on this one is to glue the sides.

417
01:00:49,040 –> 01:00:56,390
We drop that into the assembly jig, like that, and the glue should now squeeze out.

418
01:00:56,390 –> 01:01:05,460
And just make sure it sits nice and level with the corners, and when this is dry, this is going to be incredibly strong.

419
01:01:05,460 –> 01:01:12,260
OK, I’ve now painted the glue onto the two half pieces and put them together.

420
01:01:12,260 –> 01:01:19,040
Now you’ll notice the fixture has got these corner pieces on it to catch these tips.

421
01:01:19,040 –> 01:01:26,420
Remember, it was manufactured so that you bring the bottom edge of the V to this level.

422
01:01:26,420 –> 01:01:37,330
While, the top edge of the other piece sits inside here and lines it up. So you’ve got alignment for every corner, for top and bottom.

423
01:01:37,330 –> 01:01:44,040
This is the bottom where I’ve waxed it because I want to be able to put a light in the bottom here, I want access through the bottom.

424
01:01:44,040 –> 01:01:52,200
So this won’t have, this will have a solid bottom to it eventually because that’s where it will stand on and the LED lighting,

425
01:01:52,200 –> 01:01:57,750
which I haven’t yet decided on. Oh, look at that. That’s perfect.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

426
01:01:57,750 –> 01:02:07,680
So I can check the inside of my joints and I can see that there’s glue coming out of them.

427
01:02:07,680 –> 01:02:19,000
And this is after just half an hour. The glue has dried sufficiently, it’s not hard, but it’s holding everything together.

428
01:02:19,000 –> 01:02:27,990
There’s the little pile of shavings that have come off every corner. So it hasn’t burnt them away, it’s actually cut them off.

429
01:02:27,990 –> 01:02:34,980
Well, here it is finished. It’s really just a lampshade out of three millimetre MDF,

430
01:02:34,980 –> 01:02:42,030
and probably I’m going to put a little LED in the bottom to produce an up light that will cast some nice shadows.

431
01:02:42,030 –> 01:02:54,010
But hey, I’ve yet to design what goes in the bottom and how I’m going to light it.

432
01:02:54,010 –> 01:02:58,690
I can’t make you an expert on this machine. I can only provide you with the information.

433
01:02:58,690 –> 01:03:05,230
It’s the learning that I have done, and it’s taken me quite a few years to assimilate all this learning into one place.

434
01:03:05,230 –> 01:03:12,940
And as I said at the beginning of this series, I just wish I’d have known all about the science before I even started.

435
01:03:12,940 –> 01:03:20,150
You’re well on the way to being an expert now. The only thing that’s going to make you better is practice.

436
01:03:20,150 –> 01:03:25,650
These, your eyes, this your brain and your curiosity.

437
01:03:25,650 –> 01:03:36,090
This and this together should tell you when things are not quite what they seem, then you should really stop and think and try and understand.

438
01:03:36,090 –> 01:03:41,340
I can’t help you. That’s down to you. So if you go across to my RDWorks, learning lab channel,

439
01:03:41,340 –> 01:03:49,590
you’ll see that there are several hundred videos that I have produced which document my learning experience with this machine.

440
01:03:49,590 –> 01:03:56,460
This is like a sweetshop. There are millions of sweets in here which I haven’t yet tasted.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects (Cont…)

441
01:03:56,460 –> 01:04:05,370
I’m still learning. All I’ve done is handed you on the basic learning skills that will get you into using this machine competently.

442
01:04:05,370 –> 01:04:10,020
Good luck. Go forth and build that house that I described for you at the first session.

443
01:04:10,020 –> 01:04:15,980
You’ve got the bricks, you’ve got the windows, you’ve got the doors. You just got to do it.

Transcript for Here’s What You Can Do Now – Laser Machine Projects