Intro to 123D Make and the Laser Cutter in FabLab

It all started on thingiverse.com by choosing an object we could make with the laser cutter in FabLab.

With the downloaded .stl file you import it into 123D Make. 

I used interlocked slices to assemble the object. Just like this doesn't quite look like a cat, so I made some changes to the object. I also changed the size of the object to the required 200x200x200mm and the size of the laser cutting bed to 600x1200mm with 4mm for the cardboard thickness.

To give it some body I added some extra horizontal slices. Some red bits were showing which means that later on it wouldn't be able to be assembled properly. 

I then started changing the slice direction to see wether it would work another way. The blue means that there is nothing connecting that part to the object. 

With the slice direction tool I tried many ways of changing the object.

If there is only one red bit showing you can try and use the modify form tool to move the single slice into the right position or to delete it fully. That also works with the blue parts if its a small bit floating for example the little ear, I can just delete it and it would still look like a cat. 

Final outcome of the cat

Here are the plans to be exported to a .pdf file to be prepared in Adobe Illustrator using the laser cutting template.

In Adobe Illustrator making changes to the plan of the object. For the plan to be cut in the laser printer the colours actually have to the other way. So the outline is red and the numbers blue.