Ideation
I originally wanted to create “armor” for a surgical mask, but the idea wasn’t very 3D. Therefore, I decided to laser cut a statue of Pikachu. My whistle from SolidWorks was hollow, so it wasn’t the best for lase cutting. I went onto the thingiverse website and chose the creation shown below.
I knew I would have to make some modifications so I downloaded the STL file and opened it in SolidWorks. I anticipated that I would have to change any weird overhangs and small details that would cut poorly. Maybe eve make a base to keep it from falling over.
Pikachu wasn’t my first choice creation actually. I found a minion statue that looked interesting but I realized it wasn’t very good for laser printing because of the many round shapes and overhanging screws on the minion’s goggles.
Finding and modifying the design
I started by looking at the .STL file in CAD. I had some trouble modifying it because I wasn’t used to working in STL files. After messing around with it a bit though I managed to delete parts of the statue.
I specifically deleted tiny corners and overhangs. This includes his claws and parts of his ear.
Exporting and slicing in Fusion 360
After modifying the STL file, I saved it to the box and exported into slicer for fusion 360. The initial export is shown below. I scaled down the statue to be 100 mm tall. The construction technique is staacked slices. I chose stacked slices because it created the most rounded and heavy-feeling statue out of the possible options. I didn’t like how there were many small pieces. As you can see on the right, there are 52 parts to assemble.
I played around with the slice direction for a bit and saw that slicing vertically would lead to less parts. There were still some very small parts to assemble but due to the scale of the overall, I knew it wouldn’t be too unreasonable to glue them on.
Finally , I clicked the “Get Plans” button on the bottom right to save 2 .DXP files.
NOLOP: using adobe AI and cutting
While in NOLOP, I uploaded my 2 .DXP files to the laser cutting computer and opened it in adobe illustrator. I deleted all the anchors and annotations by deleting the layers they were in. This left me with just the outline of each piece. I highlighted all of it and set it to 0.001 inches, stroke color pure red. The scale was a little off, so I scaled the entire board down to 8 by 11.5 inches. This was the dimension shown on the fusion 360 slicer.
After setting it up on AI, I hit print and selected my material to be cast acrylic. I decided to use acrylic because the color looked nicer for Pikachu and I also didn’t want any burnt wood parts.
I repeated this process twice because I had two pages to cut. I didn’t encounter any major difficulties when cutting. I did note a few important things, however, for future printing: have an extra layer below, rip only one side of the acrylic paper off, set the material length to be a tiny bit more, and try to combine everything closely together on AI to save resources when cutting.
Final Product
In the end, I was left with 33 pieces which I assembled by following the numbers and picture on slicer for fusion 360. This was actually more difficult can 3D printing because the glue I used wasn’t very strong. Therefore it took me a really long time to glue everything together and I had use make shift supports (cardboard and paper) to support the parts.
In the end, it all worked out. I had a small acrylic base cut out and the pikachu managed to stand all on its own even though it’s a bit fragile on the tail end. One thing I noticed is how thing it is. Slicer did not expect my acrylic pieces to only be 3 mm thick so pikachu is very skinny.
Most important takeaways and difficulties
I’ve never done laser cutting before and feel a lot more comfortable now to use it for prototyping. My most valuable takeaways are how to slice up objects made in CAD and how to use AI effectively. I think the most difficult thing about laser cutting is being creative. Since the pieces have to be flat, there is a lot creativity required to make “round” object. It is important to consider how many pieces you want, what pieces are too small and should be omitted, and when 3D printing is more appropriate.
What I found most difficult about this assignment was putting the pieces together and also deciding what direction to slice in. This was simpler than the 3D printing in my opinion but I found laser printing to be less versatile. It did not save much time for me because putting the pieces together took longer than the time it would have took for me to 3D print the entire piece.
Conclusion and Possible improvements
In the future, rather than making something 3D in structure, I would like to create something with less layers. I would prefer to make something like a card holder, box, or container. This way I can save on acrylic and also spend less time gluing. In terms of possible improvements, I think interlocking parts rather than stacking could’ve saved time and money in the long term.
I can see how laser cutting can be useful in biomedical prototyping though. Flat pieces can be useful for prototyping tools. Laser cutting is also very fast and inexpensive.