Laser Cutting

The laser room is equiped with a Trotec Speedy 300, 80W, CO2 laser capable of cutting, engraving, and marking a variety of materials. Two Windows desktop computers with Adobe Illustrator and Inkscape are available for preparing laser job files.

= Certification =

The Laser Basic Use & Safety class is a required certification to use this machine.

= Trotec Speedy 300 =

Note: Cutting operations have reduced maximum work area, i.e. cutting along work area perimeter is reduced from listed work area (~1 cm).

Manufacturer's Manual
A majority of questions about the laser can be answered in the manual. Please consult the manual if you need help and no one is around to provide an answer.

Manufacturer's Manual

= File Preparation =

Terminology

 * Bitmap - Representation of an image as bits of information (pixels); used to allow logos/stencils to be changed into colors.
 * Vector - Representation of an image as shapes, rather than bits; used to allow logos/stencils to be modified as objects.
 * Trace Bitmap - Can be used on a bitmap to to turn it into a vector.

Drawing files must be sized in mm's. Cut lines in file should be drawn with a width of 0.001 mm.

= Software = The only software that is able to run the Laser is the manufacturers Trotec Job Control

In the case of whatever computer controlling the laser breaks down, a backup of the JobControl ISO is backed up to the internal Fat Cat Fab Lab Google Drive, and can be reinstalled from that.

= Approved Materials = These listed materials are tested and approved by Fat Cat Fab Lab for lasering. Not every material on this list can be laser cut, some can only be engraved or marked--see "Considerations / Uses" for details.

= Prohibited Materials = Do NOT laser any of these materials. It can cause harm to the machine and any human being in the area.

= Where to Buy Material =

Wood
= Operating the Laser = Never leave the laser unattended while in operation! Materials can catch fire so the laser must always be used with attention by the operator and they must stay present in the laser room.

Lens Types
We have 2" (default) and 4" focal length lenses.

= Troubleshooting =

Job Control error "No more room left for jobs"

 * Make sure your job is smaller than 27" x 17"
 * Make sure you're sending your job in the correct orientation.

Laser decides not to cut all, or certain vectors

 * Make sure you don't have overlapping cut lines. This can be caused by using the "Paste in Place" function in Illustrator.
 * In Illustrator:
 * Check your Document Color Mode (duh).
 * Check the dropdown menu in the color tool palette. Confirm that RGB is selected, and not Grayscale or other.
 * Select your vectors and bring up the color dialog. Edit menu -> Edit Colors -> RGB

Laser chamber fills with smoke

 * Check that the air filter is working, by manually toggling the air filter power button. On the airfilter console, this button's icon is a circle with a line through it. If it's not running, stop working and notify the #laser Slack channel or the Board.

= Maintenance =

Lens Cleaning
Manufacturer Instructions

Air Filter Replacements
The air filter has 5 different layers and usually the top fiberglass one needs cleaning about every 2 weeks, depending on usage.

The 3 below that get replaced after 1000 hours.

From top down, they are:
 * Screen
 * Fiberglass
 * Cartridge
 * 70 lbs activated charcoal
 * Fiberglass

Replace Honeycomb Bed
A replacement can be found on eBay for much less than it can be purchased from Trotec.

Search for: Aluminum Honeycomb Sheet / Honeycomb Grid Core - 1/2" cell, 24"x48", T=1.00"

Extricate the old honeycomb from the frame, keeping close track of the bolts. Count the cells in the X and Y. Cut the new honeycomb using the same number of cells. Re-assemble frame.

= Laser Lab Setup = The laser setup is a bit clunky since we're making it so that multiple computers can use a single laser, which is not a normal feature of Trotec JobControl. This section attempts to describe the setup so it can be recreated as necessary,

JobControl uses the "Spool Directory" config to know what jobs to load. JobControls installs its own driver that pretends to be a normal printer,

Essentially, we "trick" the printer driver from the desktops into sending a job to a remote JobControl instance, hosted on the laser laptop.

The lab computers mounts a network drive shared from the computer connected to the laser, at the time of writing is the "X:\\" directory. The laser computer is then accessed by VNC, which should be an icon on the desktop of both computers

The JobControl executable should be renamed to prevent the executable from loading when "printing" a job from Adobe Illusttrator.