LASER CUTTING

Before easter I decided to book myself on to a laser cutting induction as it's something i've been wanting to do for ages. Annoyingly it got cancelled a couple of days before and it was the last one before the holidays which is a shame, but I made sure I was booked onto the first one back. I had it a couple of days ago and I wondered why I hadn't done it sooner. The induction itself showed us briefly how to use the laser cutter and ran through the do's and don't's and what sort of materials it could cut. We also got a leaflet explaining the process and were told any of the staff would happily help if we got stuck. Today I booked myself in to one of the laser cutters for a couple of hours to have a go at cutting some of my figures out.

I picked out a few different figures I already had drawings of as I was using this as more of a test run than anything just to try and get used to the process. The laser cutter can do a few different things, but as I wanted them simply cut out of wood I had to used a thin line to outline the shapes and make sure the line was in black, as this is the colour linked with the laser cutter to make sure it knows to cut them out. I was originally planning on cutting these two documents out on 2 A4 pieces of wood, but when I got down to the woodwork room I realised they only had the thicker type of wood, so I thought it was best to upsize and make each of them A3 so the figures were a little bigger. 

When I went to use it the laser cutter seemed to be having a few problems which was typical really, so I ended up having to try a couple of times before it actually worked. I think because of the thicker wood it had to go round a couple of times before it managed to cut through the wood. 

The problems with the laser cutter did mean that I got a couple of duplicated figures which was good! These are what I ended up with and i'm so pleased. The edges are so clean and i'm so excited to get a bit of colour on them!