Industry likes to maintain barriers to entry with fabrication equipment and technology. As soon as there’s operational software, complex mechanics or dreaded lasers, the manufacturing price goes through the roof.
Service providers will declare that it’s too hard for the lay person to fathom technology. Too dangerous for the uninitiated. And they'll charge like a wounded bull to do the work for you.
To make matters worse, usually such equipment is prohibitively expensive to buy in the first place which leaves the little operator stuck between a rock and a hard place. Can't buy it, and can't afford to have it done for you.
But it doesn’t have to be like this.
For instance, a laser cutter is basically a glorified printer. Instead of an inkjet moving back and forth over a flat surface, a laser cutter has a mirror that reflects a laser beam downward onto whatever material you place underneath it. It reads pixels for engraving and vector lines for cutting and operates just like any other printer.
As soon as you’ve understood a few simple operational parameters like power (laser strength), frequency (laser pulses) and speed (how fast it travels) and some basic OH+S you’re pretty much good to go. An understanding of a vector based drawing software like ADOBE Illustrator will fast track your learning and then it’s pretty much just knowing a handful of operational does and don’ts.
With basic Illustrator knowledge, you can learn to use our laser cutter in a six hour course and once you get your head around what it’s capable of, your creative world will expand. When you complete our course you can get cheap DIY access to work on your own projects.
One of the coolest things that a laser cutter can do is eliminate the toxic chemicals and copper in traditional printmaking techniques. Like any art practice, it takes a bit of experimenting to achieve good tonal variations and line densities, but once this is achieved, the results are very similar to traditional copper etching.
Adding laser cutting to your practice will help many creative pursuits from art, design, product development, hardware, models, jewelry and more.
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