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Words used to describe processes:-
- Fixing parts: I usually seal
laminated card parts and other soft materials with a quality sanding
sealer applied with an Air Brush or aerosol spray. The sealer soaks into the parts and
hardens when cured. This process is
best done while parts are still attached to the surrounding parts or waste
materials, specially if parts are very small. Apply sealer from both sides. Once sealed, parts that require final
sanding are much less inclined to fluff up.
- Group: A series of
single lines, arcs, circles or any combination, which makes a part. When grouped they act as one single item
or part. Groups can also be used to
treat a series of groups as one item.
Groups are easy to move around without fear of leaving vital bits behind.
- Kerf: The waste material or
cut produced by the vector cutting process.
- Layers: Akin to drawing on
transparent sheets placed one over the other, each sheet with different
details. Sheets can be removed and
replaced at will changing the drawing.
- Raster: The motion is quite
different, the laser moves back and forth or up and down the file firing
on each part which is to be engraved.
Like a sewing machine sewing a button hole. The process is quite slow and for that
reason, the file should be set in such a way as to group parts to be
engraved. If grouping is not
possible, the laser can spend a lot of time traversing the file from
extremity to extremity. If parts
are at extremities the time problem can be managed by assigning different
colours which will concentrate the laser in one location before moving to
the next location, the colours are assigned the same parameters.
- Spurs: A bridge of material
spanning between the part and its surroundings. This is hand cut to
release the part. Holding all the
parts together is important for several reasons.
·
Stop parts moving in the laser
while being cut.
·
Stop parts being blown out and
damaged or lost.
·
Keep all the parts together at
dispatch to ensure none is missing.
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Make packaging simple. Laying flat sheets one on top of the other.
·
In some situations, parts may
need to be fixed, sealed or painted before assembly.
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NOTES
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The spur is only achieved by
cutting the line. Placing a white rectangle or line at right-angle to hide the
line will not work under any circumstances.
·
The spur cut should be the same
width as the material being cut, ie 1mm material = 1mm gap in the cut line.
- Test file: Is the same
as the finished file or at least a final draft.
- Vector: The line cutting
process. Follows a line from start
to finish in the direction drawn and in the sequential order as was
applied to the drawing. The laser
may dart all over the file area to execute lines sequentially. This process is only executed on the
finest line width.
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NOTES
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Lines laid one on top of the
other will be cut in turn, (each line is cut) this is useful if multi cuts are
required on thicker materials but generally it just slows the process.
Multiple lines are not
easily detected so they should be delt with as they occur.
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