Week 1# - Journal

This week’s assignment was to get acquainted with both the laser cutter and 3d printer. Before starting we had to watch all the tutorials, then we browsed through different resources (3axis -Thingiverse) for designs to get inspired and choose the ones we will fabricate. While looking, I noticed that the designs i usually preferred, satisfied two conditions 1- is practical in my daily life (ex: a phone holder in the shape of a dog) 2- is aesthetically pleasing. so based on these two conditions I began to choose my designs.

I used Laser work to adjust the dimensions of the tree shaped(design from 3axis.co) design, in order to do that I had to click on the lock sign so that you can enlarge or compress your shape in the same scale. Then i chose the cut mode and changed the power to 65 and the speed to 25. To save my work , I clicked on save and made sure the extension is .rld .

lastly I began to alter my 3d design(design from Thingiverse) on Cura , changed the profile setting to 0.2 mm , the infill to 20% , and the scale to a suitable size then I started to think of my design in terms of support and adhesion , and I came to the realization ( which my instructor did approve of :) ) that this design doesn’t need support because it’s basically horizontal ( which was the best orientation for my design at the time ) so each layer is supported by the layers beforehand and there isn’t a part that sticks out alone , it also didn’t acquire any adhesion ( brim ) because the base is quite wide so there wouldn’t be any risk of the shape moving in the fabrication process . not selecting those two options did indeed save me material and time . another amazing feature that Cura offers is after slicing your design and seeing the estimated time and grams , you can also start the slicing from layer 1 and see how each layer is going to build up and what may go wrong in the process without support . finally , I exported the file and chose extension .gcode .

I did ask for feedback and my fellows in the lab were kind enough to express their admiration for my keychain dinosaur especially because it’s flexible so it’s kind of enjoyable to play with. The instructor who helped during the process was very knowledgeable and knew which designs that won't work or come out as well as I thought.

As it was my first time working with those machines, I did receive a lot of help from the instructors in the lab. but I tried as much as I can to do my part. I watched the tutorials before my in-lab session and took a lot of notes that I reviewed later. The mistake that I did was how I visualized my design and based on that I made all the line mode cut on laser work but afterward I realised that the design could have been much better if I envisioned it differently and had some lines engraved.