Lazer Cutting

For the music box, I have used Autodesk Inventor Professional 2020 to design, LibreCAD to reformat the drawing files and Inkscape to convert the drawings to Scalarble Vector Graphics.


Then I had to export the faces as .dxf files and opened in Inkscape.
However, due to incompatability issues with exported faces of Inventor with Inkscape, where the exported .dxf files of Inventor is of relese 12 .dxf format.
The solution is to save it in a different file format, using LibreCAD.
Using LibreCAD, I am able to save the .dxf as a 2007 .dxf release.



These files were imported into 1 Inkscape A4 drawings and exported as an .svg file.

As a proof of concept, I have attempted to engrave Mai Sakurajima from 青春ブタ野郎はランドセルガールの夢を見ない into the inside cover of the music box.

Image reference used:



To implement an engraving of Mai onto the box, the image has to be converted to either a vector or raster engraving.


Vector engraving was chosen due to the uncertainty of time constraints when laser cutting.
The bit stroke of Mai was made by manually trace the outline and features using the Bezier pen, the node tool and the snapping toolbar.



This is not the only method to trace the image. However due to the complexity of the model, some of the crucial details to make Mai come alive were not able to be captured by the software, and some of the extra details were also added in as strokes. With editing hundreds of computer generated strokes proving to be out of my abilities, I have opted to do it manually.


After that, the tracing was imported into the original music box file, resized and realigned.
Thereafter, the following settings were applied:

	Vector Cut	Vector Engrave
Color	Red	Green
Line Weight	Hairline	Thicker than Hairline

Transfering this onto CorelDraw on the laser cutting machine, I have set the following setting for the cuts.

	Vector Cut (Red)	Vector Engrave (Green)
Power	40%	40%
Speed	15%	50%
PPI	600	200
Z-Offset	0.3mm	0.5mm

---

Video of the laser cutting process:

Music Box Vector Cut


Mai Sakurajima Vector Engraving:



Scalarble Vector Graphics file for box with engraving
Scalarble Vector Graphics file for Mai