Manufacturing Techniques

Laser Cutter

We used the laser cutter to produce some of our components and pieces of the box. Firstly CAD drawings in solid works had to be made, once this was done the files had to be converted to DXF format so the laser printer can take the profile of the component and cut it out. We used the laser cutter because using the laser creates a clean and accurate cut, also it is a good method to use to cut our acrylic. This is because acrylic is a brittle material which is had to cut any other way. The laser cutter uses a laser to cut through the material, this laser is a concentrated beam of light which is refracted up to the point of cutting. When the laser cutter is working it is important to have an extractor taking all of the harmful chemicals away from cutting the acrylic and to get rid of any residue from the acrylic.

CNC

We used the CNC machine for our base panel which had important slots and grooves which needed to be routed out. The CNC has a number of tools it can use on various materials, the tool we used on it was a 2mm end mill which spun at a high rpm. The CNC like the laser cutter runs on a computer program that needs to be programmed with code relating to our CAD designs on solid works. This code tells the machine where to cut, to what depth and the type of cut. The end mill takes away material similar to a drill and is effective at coming out with the desired finish.

Band Saw

We used a band saw, this was not a manufacturing technique that we planned to use as we had a different material to use and a time constraint that was not originally planned. The band saw was used to cut the wood that we used to create the exterior of box and part of the lid. We printed out our panel designs off solid works and cut them out and used them as templates on the wood. Then the panels were cut out however the band saw leaves a rough edge and finish to the panels. so we had to sand them down afterwards. The band saw is a blade held at both ends which vibrates in a vertical motion using a serrated blade to cut into the panels and remove material.