Number 03 – RDWorks Learning Lab 005 – Cutting first program

RDWorks Cutting Your First Program Transcript

0:00 welcome again to RDWorks Learning

0:01 Lab and today we’re going to be down in

0:04 the workshop you’ve loaded your program

0:07 in now but you want to cut something

0:09 what are you going to cut well some

0:13 materials you can cut lots of materials

0:16 will cut some materials you shouldn’t

0:19 cut because they produce dangerous fumes

0:21 or they will produce a horrible

0:23 sticky residue in your laser machine so there

0:32 are lots of there’s lots of information

0:34 out there on the internet about cutting

0:36 these materials I can’t go into it here

0:39 because it’s far too complicated but

0:41 things like printed circuit board stay

0:45 away from it this floor tile which has

0:48 got PVC in it anything with vinyl or PVC

0:51 don’t go anywhere near it it produces

0:54 deadly fumes and you don’t want to cut

0:56 it polycarbonate acrylic is good

1:02 cardboard and MDF well yeah produce lots

1:07 of films and it will produce smelly

1:08 smelly fumes that will last a long while

1:11 inside your laser machine you may or may not

1:13 want to cut those yeah it cuts

1:15 reasonably well ptg mmm go and do your

1:20 own research so basically you need to be

1:24 sure that you know what you’re cutting

1:25 because some things or they may look the

1:29 same but they’re not the same and I’m

1:31 now going to give you a simple example

1:33 of that now we have here on the floor

1:35 five pieces of clear thin material

1:40 they’re all different materials so how

1:43 do we tell them apart

1:44 some are better for laser cutting than

1:46 others well this one here I know is

1:49 polycarbonate yeah you can cut it it’s

1:51 not advisable to cut anything over a

1:54 thin film they use this stuff for bus

2:01 shelters and riot shields and you can

RDWorks Cutting Your First Program Transcript (Cont…)

2:05 see why it’s extremely strong and

2:07 durable now this material here is a

2:10 slightly thicker material

2:11 it’s something called a copolyester it’s

2:14 commonly known as PE TG and it’s the

2:17 sort of thing that’s used in fizzy pop

2:20 bottle it can soften nice and easily and

2:21 it can be blow molded into bottles as

2:27 you can see that again is pretty tough

2:29 and it has to be if it’s going to be

2:31 used in fizzy pop bottles now this next

2:34 piece of material here is again PE TG

2:37 but it’s thinner exactly the same

2:44 properties it doesn’t smash it doesn’t

2:47 crack now what about this material here

2:51 the fact that that smash is so easily

2:53 tells me it is cast acrylic that’s a

2:57 nice safe material to cut and finally if

3:01 I tap it gently you’ll see that it does

3:04 mark but then it breaks quite easily so

3:09 this is still acrylic but it’s

3:12 manufactured in a different way the

3:14 first one was cast acrylic this one is

3:17 extruded acrylic it’s slightly tougher

3:20 and it’s got more flex to it now it

3:22 might seem a fairly crude test but it

3:25 tells you very quickly what materials

3:27 you’re working with now there are a few

3:29 good websites around this one in

3:31 particular which gives a good 6 income

3:34 resource of things that you need to be

3:36 careful of with materials for example as

3:39 a heading here which says never cut

3:40 these materials and then you’ve got

3:42 another section here which says cutting

3:44 cutting but with cautions and etching

3:48 again with cautions so this website is

3:52 well worth a visit and you can study it

3:55 at length right let’s have a little bit

3:58 of a look at the machine itself and see

RDWorks Cutting Your First Program Transcript (Cont…)

4:01 how we can now run this test I’ve now

4:07 got a piece of clear acrylic here and

4:10 I’m going to probably run this program

4:13 twice so what I’m going to do is with my

4:15 knife I’m going to put a score at roster

4:19 and I’m going to remove a plastic film

4:24 from one side and we’ll use that for the

4:29 first test right although we’ve got our

4:34 file in memory it’s not exactly ready to

4:38 run yet so if we press file again which

4:42 will find that it’s probably sitting

4:44 here and it’s now available to us here

4:47 if we press ENTER again it now appears

4:53 on here we’ve got our two layer

4:56 parameters shown here if we press ENTER

5:01 again we bring the cursor across to

5:07 these two layer parameters where we can

5:10 change we can choose for example between

5:13 either of these two layers to edit to

5:16 the layer so we press ENTER to edit the

5:19 layer and here the layer is available

5:22 for us to enter now we’ve got minimum

5:25 power one minimum power – we know that 2

5:28 is not available to us so we’re only

5:30 going to mess around with minimum power

5:32 1 and maximum power 1 and to get to

5:35 these you don’t use the down arrows you

5:38 use the zu key so we’re going to move

5:41 from at the moment if you take a look up

5:43 here we’ve got the layer color active

5:46 and if we change that we can go to black

5:49 or red so now we can come down with the

5:54 ZU key to the first option and then if

6:00 we press the ZU again we then get the

RDWorks Cutting Your First Program Transcript (Cont…)

6:02 opportunity to change these if we wish

6:05 and we can do that with the arrow keys

6:07 change the numbers and then we can just

6:10 select every one of these windows with

6:14 the Z u key and when we finished we just

6:17 press Enter set up success enter don’t

6:23 escape

6:25 so we know do file again and here’s our

6:31 file that we’re going to run now one

6:33 thing I like to do before a start is to

6:36 do what they call a track so we’ll come

6:40 down to track and I’ll press enter in a

6:46 minute but I’ll show you what will

6:49 happen on the laser machine now bear in mind

6:53 I’ve got nothing on no laser

6:55 nothing at all all I’ve got is the

6:57 machine power on at the moment so we can

7:00 press enter hmm so that’s a big waste of

7:10 material we can either move the material

7:13 to suit where the laser is moving and

7:16 that may not always be possible but

7:18 let’s stay with that simple option at

7:20 this point in time track enter again

7:28 and it does stop at the top left hand

7:31 corner so we can in fact move that down

7:36 to about there and we’re now ready to

7:41 run our program accept the fact we

7:43 haven’t got the Machine switched on so

7:45 let’s go through that routine you know

7:47 first of all switching on the water pump

7:50 lots of air going through the laser we

7:54 wait for the air bubbles to clear and

7:58 there we go we can hear that they’re

7:59 virtually cleared now will now turn the

RDWorks Cutting Your First Program Transcript (Cont…)

8:02 lace on I shall now turn the extractor

8:10 fan on

8:16 and on my machine here I’ve got control

8:21 of the air pressure that flows through

8:23 the head here the air assist so I’m

8:26 going to turn the air assist on

8:29 pressure gauge

8:32 my compressor you may be a turn-on in

8:34 the back

8:37 I’ve got something like about maybe half

8:39 a psi of pressure in there

8:46 so we’re all ready to run now

8:49 we just come down to

8:55 and we’ll move this up to run and then I

8:59 should just press Enter

9:02 right here we go in

9:19 I’m gonna press pause for a second

9:22 now the reason I’ve moved the camera is

9:24 I want you to look just here

9:27 yeah there’s like a white halo down

9:30 there now that’s the acrylic when the

9:33 when the laser beam hits the acrylic it

9:35 boils off like Steam and this is like a

9:38 recon den site that’s sitting down the

9:41 side here it’s a powdery condensate I

9:43 will now turn off the air

9:50 so I’ll press the pause star

9:55 now you see we’re producing a lot more

9:56 films

10:01 but you’ll notice that we’re not

RDWorks Cutting Your First Program Transcript (Cont…)

10:03 producing

10:24 now we can see here two things first of

10:26 all when I turned the air off all of a

10:30 sudden it changed its characteristic

10:33 look Eternia powdery

10:36 residue on the surface

10:39 but

10:41 it reeked and enters on the surface and

10:43 makes a bit of a mess so it’s a

10:46 trade-off and the other thing that we

10:49 found is that we haven’t got enough

10:50 power here to cut through these items

10:54 so we need to go and modify the power or

10:58 decrease the speed which is probably the

11:01 sensible thing to do

11:04 and will come into the menu here and

11:08 we’ll press Enter

11:11 and the one that we want to change is

11:14 the cut speed which is the black one

11:17 so we press Enter

11:20 and at the moment we’ve got that running

11:21 at 15 millimetres a second I think we’ll

11:26 drop that down so we need to come down

11:28 with ZU and we need to reduce that

11:30 speed to maybe maybe we’ll take it down

11:33 to ten so we’ll move this left hand

11:36 arrow key and it’s gone under the one

11:39 will move it with the right hand arrow

11:42 key and it’s gone under the five now we

11:45 can reduce the five

11:48 ten there we go and now we can just

11:51 press ENTER, err we can now just press

11:53 ENTER I think and we should have done

11:54 all the modifications we don’t need to

11:56 change anything else

11:59 setup success okay so we’re now ready to

RDWorks Cutting Your First Program Transcript (Cont…)

12:04 file

12:08 oops

12:11 run I should just press these press the

12:14 enter button in a second when I get you

12:16 back on

12:22 and I think this time what we’ll do

12:26 would turn this round

12:29 and we’ll have a go at cutting through

12:31 the protective film

12:39 and I will turn the air on again

12:41 the air asist because I don’t want to

12:43 damage my lens

12:44 what they’re passing through the most

13:14 so it still hasn’t dropped out because

13:16 we haven’t got enough power there or

13:17 this protective film on the surface here

13:19 is absorbing

13:22 more of the engine I expect so let’s

13:25 take the film off with the front and the

13:27 back run it again the one thing I didn’t

13:30 check was the focus

13:33 it does look at the focuses and that may

13:36 well be the cause of the problem there

13:37 we go that’s the correct focus now

13:45 that’s a good reason why you should set

13:47 your focus correctly and as our end

13:49 result we’ve got a lovely crystal clear

13:51 edge the surface is covered in this

13:57 debris which will just wash off to be

14:01 honest but there’s our first test piece

RDWorks Cutting Your First Program Transcript (Cont…)

14:03 with a few mistakes that I’ve made

14:04 hopefully you won’t step into the same

14:07 problems