Laser Cut and Model Making

Laser cut was a success with the exception of the original file not showing up in the laser cutting program. The fix for this was to copy my content into a new Illustrator template file for the laser cutter.

The material was burnt around the edges, leaving a horrible mess on my fingers when putting the model together. The photos below show the process from the finished laser cut to assembling the model. I tried to take some fancy night shots just by using the torch on my phone. Would like to light up my final model with lights.

 

Ferrari F1

The initial thought of finding a formula F1 car from Google warehouse and to get it to laser cut was pretty cool. 

Although as you see in the video... TOO MANY PARTS!!!!! So I decided to scrap that idea. I'm not giving up though. Will have another crack at this later. Maybe try a different plugin? Slicing the model from different angles?

Sketchup Model for Laser Cutting

Sketchup - Slice Plugin - DWG

The video above shows the model I created being intersected with other parts. I then use the slice plugin for the first time. Once the plugin sliced my model and placed it side by side. I was annoyed at the fact some of the slices were overlapping. So I then had to edit and move some of them across. I noticed the line work was clean, so there was no need for me to import into AutoCAD to clean up. I placed the DWG file from sketchup into Illustrator and got it ready for laser cutting.