3/28/22 Drone Fabrication Day

Note: Before cutting, Colin homed/zeroed the laser but was not paying attention. The head caught on the bed and pulled it up onto an angle. The staff on duty had to block the air quality sensor and open up the laser cutter to align the mirrors to recenter the laser.

Link to photos of progress are here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/dPoGaGPHbALGJDmu6

Here were the test parts that were used for determining the “feeds and speeds” of the laser cutter. 

Note we are using mdf particle board from Amazon

Moving from top right down was 100% speed 100% power  on the wood. You can observe how charged the wood got. 

We applied wax paper onto the board to absorb some of the laser energy.

Then 100% speed 100% power on wax paper (was unable to separate work from stock)

Then 80% speed 100% power on wax paper

(was unable to separate work from stock)

Then 70% speed 100% power on wax paper 2 passes (was unable to separate work from stock)

Note that the particle board works much better on the cnc machine.

So this was 70% speed 100% power for 2 passes. But as the bed of the laser was slightly tilted, the portion of the board close to the middle of the laser cutter did not cut all the way through. We suspect that the board was too close to the laser head for the effective cut. 

We found the optimal placement was in the bottom left.

There were some hiccups encountered during the manufacturing process, for example, tolerances were off.

The thickness was 2.7 mm of the material but the hole in cad was only 1.5 mm or 2mm in real lids. I adjusted the hole in v8 of the drone plates to be 2.2 mm but this perfect tolerance

was too little to really allow for a loose fit.

Colin had to use multiple clamps to attempt to force the vertical walls to interface with the plates.

Colin used a scroll saw to cut out the edges of the plates that were not completely removed. Colin understands now why the mdf is called a particle board, it was super easy to cut. However Colin was pushing too hard too quickly and broke the scroll saw blade. The flat plate on the scroll saw tool was much easier to handle with the flat plate to rest the work.