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About the Course
Laser Maker is a 2 day course, designed to give junior campers (ages 9-13) an introduction to 2D design, modelling and laser cutting. This course is part of the 'Maker Week' series including 3D Maker, Laser Maker and micro:bit Maker.
We're trying to get the students to:
- Quickly build lots of fun projects
- Understand how to model in 2D (and 3D) using Tinkercad
- Have an introduction laser cutting and the possibilities of things it can do
Health and Safety
As well as the rest of this guide, please also see:
General Workshops Risk Assessment
The Kit List
Student consumables (per student to take home)
- Large ziplock bag for taking home all of their projects
- USB stick for taking home 3D files (if a camper is doing multiple maker courses or Maker Week, they should only get 1!)
- Clock movement and AA battery
- 1 stick hotmelt glue per camper
- Laser cut bedroom sign blank
- 6 sheets of depron foam
- 1/20 pack of blutack (for fixing bedroom sign to wall)
- 1/10 of a sheet of 0.5mm black HIPS
- 1/4 of a sheet of each colour of neoprene foam
Class kit (not to take home)
- 1 pack of wax crayons
- 1 roll of tape between 4 students
- 1 glue gun per 2 students
- 1 knife (tutor use only for cutting sheets if required)
- 1 roll paper towel (for cleaning wax from bedroom signs)
Maker Week Shared Class Kit
- Maker Week course badge (1 per student doing whole week of Maker courses)
- Laser cutter, extractor, PSU, platen and USB cable
- Laptop with EleksCam installed for running laser cutter
- 2x 5m extension leads
- 1x 4 way power board, + 2 per 8 campers
- 1 safety mat per student
- 1 set headphones per student
- 100 sheets A4 paper, and 10 per student
- 1 pencil per student (and 2 spare)
- 1 rubber per 2 students
- 1 ruler between 2 students
- 1 pair of scissors between 2 students
- 1 set of felt tips between 4 students
- 1 pencil sharpener between 4 students
- 1 roll double sided tape per 4 students
- 1 Tech Camp Stamp per tutor
- Roll of bin bags
- 1 set dry wipe pens
- 2 permanent markers
Preparing Yourself
Like any practical course you'll find this much easier to teach if you have run through it yourself as completely as possible first.
As a minimum, you'll need to:
- Read through this guide completely and be comfortable with it
- Run through the student's guide completely, building all of the projects using Tinkercad and creating the SVG files for laser cutting
As the start of this course is tutor-led you'll also need to run through your delivery of the course a couple of times - ideally out loud, but at least in your head. If you are working with more than one tutor, you will want to decide between yourselves how to split the tasks/explanations in this initial part of the lesson.
Tutor Training Day
When you arrive for the tutor training day (at Winchester this will be before the students arrive, for other camps it will be a number of weeks before the first camp), we will go through some general things (like child protection training), but the bulk of the day will be on preparing yourself for teaching the course.
How will we check that you are prepared?
We will expect you to:
- Explain to us some of the concepts in the tutor guide - i.e. you need to be able to tell us how the course is organised, what some of the important points are about safety and efficiently operating the courses, and be able to answer questions about these things intelligently!
- We'll ask you to show us some of your designs you have made in Tinkercad - hopefully you will have come up with a few original takes on the stock designs!
What will we show you?
- We'll bring along a laser cutter, and give you the chance to try cutting some things on it, and look at how it is put together
- We will give you some pointers on laser operation, debugging and handy tips and tricks
Any additional time will be spent practising printing and trying out the laser cutter, and if the training day is immediately before the commencement of the course, organising supplies, and getting things ready.
Pre-Camp Setup (By Tech Camp)
- Cut HIPS sheets to fit in laser
- Cut depron sheets to fit in laser
- Cut door sign blanks
IT Systems Check
- Sound and USB ports functional on computers
- Student logins work for this website (login details for students on this page)
- At least 1 laptop, or desktop that is close to the machine ( which will need to be close to a window) installed with Elekscam for running the laser cutter - you can download it here. After installation you will need to click the down arrow in the top right and "Install Driver" to install the USB driver for the Laser serial chip. Check laser cutter actually works and is focussed.
- Check following websites are available:
- tinkercad.com
- courses.techcamp.org.uk
You will need to signup for a Tinkercad account and register as a teacher (straightforward to do on tinkercad.com) so that you can give any students under 13 an approval code (see the first student guide on making an account for more information).
Pre-Course Setup
There are no parts required for the start of the course, just ensure all computers are functional.
It works best if you give out the other components as they are required - this allows you to explain what the components are and makes sure that students don't start later activities before they have finished the previous ones!
Rules for Students
This course is primarily delivered by a number of tutorials. For this to work well, the students should:
- Carefully follow the guides, and be sure to read the information on them before asking for help!
- Be careful with all of their parts - if they lose them, they should look carefully in the surrounding area and on the floor before being given any spares, as there will be a very limited number available.
- Be sure to save each design and file they make on their memory sticks so they don't lose them.
Guidelines for Tutors
- All of the projects have very clearly defined limits for the overall size of their designs, or how many sheets they should fit onto. It is imperative that these are stuck to - the course has been very carefully designed so that there is enough time to cut everyone's projects during the session times. The students have instructions on how to check this, but it is down to you to make sure they stick to the limits when cutting their designs.
- The online editor can crash, and they might lose their work - make sure they are saving all of their downloaded files to their memory sticks so they don't lose anything.
- There should be plenty of activities and projects for even the most competent camper not to run out of things to do during the day. If younger ones don't manage to finish all of the projects, don't worry - it is better for them to go home with fewer well finished projects instead of many that don't look good.
- Try to make sure that campers don't rush through the projects without completing them properly - in this situation they might run out of things to do!
- Use the permanent marker to name their plastic bags, so they can keep track of their parts
Running the Session
- Tutors introduce themselves / kids introduce themselves
- Explain the structure of the course, and get them excited by quickly explaining some of the cooler projects and showing them any examples you have made yourself (virtually or physically)
- Explain how the online documentation system works, how the guides are laid out and how they should carefully read the instructions before asking for help
- Show them how to login to the system and get them started on the first project
After the first session on the first day, the campers should generally be completing 1 project per 1.5/h session, i.e. 4 projects per day. Try and get them to stick to this - there are a few options for extension activities but these really shouldn't be needed before the afternoon of the second day for even the fastest campers.
Extension Activities
- Create their own designs on Tinkercad of anything they like (but they won't necessarily be able to cut them out)
- Play with the 3D pens from the 3D maker course - see below for operation instructions.
- Create their own projects or ideas using any leftover Depron and coloured foam from the other projects - make sure they are aware they can't make anything too large or that takes too long for you to cut out, and if they do want to cut things out they must bring the files to you well in advance of the end of the day (and certainly not in the last 5 minutes of the last session)!
3D Pens
These allow the students to freeform create their own designs from plastic. It is possible to actually draw in 3D if you do it very slowly and blow at the same time, however the best method is generally to create 2D sections on the desk, peel them off and then stick them together to create 3D objects. For example, you can create an Eiffel Tower by making 4 sides and then sticking them together in 3D. There are enough for 1 per camper and a few spares if you need to fix any that clog up (see below). Before using the pen, use the blue masking tape to cover and area of desk for them to draw on so that the surface is not damaged.
Guidelines for tutors:
- Keep the pens in the stands as much as possible when they are not in use (and encourage the campers to do so as well) - this makes it less likely that the filament yet to be melted will come into contact with a hot pen tip and be melted/destroyed
- Cut off small sections of filament from the reels to use in the pens - only a few metres at a time is fine. The pens should never feed filament directly off of a reel. Keep any pre-cut parts in a tutor only area - campers should not get these themselves.
- Generally, when the pens get blocked there is a small piece of filament in the end.
- Heat the pen up, then us a screwdriver to push in the black tabs at the tip and remove the black cover.
- Carefully use pliers on the black mount of the heating element and tip to remove it.
- There will usually be a piece of filament sticking out now – grab it with a pair of pliers and pull it out.
- Reassemble and this fixes 95% of broken pens (and this does happen quite a lot)
- If pen won’t feed filament out of back of pen, heat up then press the release button and pull hard with a pair of pliers on the filament, this will usually release it.
- If the black shield on the end keeps coming off, or won't clip back on after being taken off to fix a blockage, gently heat each tab with a soldering iron at around 300 degrees, and bend them outwards carefully. The tip should now clip on nicely. Ask the Technical Manager/Manager to borrow a soldering iron from the emergency toolkit.
- Anything else broken generally involves disassembly and swapping out parts – back white section can be removed by prying with a flathead screwdriver and everything else inside is obvious how it comes apart.
- “ERR” on the screen either means the heating element isn’t plugged or has a faulty connection, or the heating element is bust completely
- Please inform the Technical Manager of any pens deemed unfixable (they are Chinese and this may well happen to don't worry - this is why there are 2 spare pens).
Guidelines for students:
- Don’t touch the hot end (sink and tap will be available if they do, but it isn’t that bad unless you try and stab yourself with it)
- Press the down button, plastic will come out of the nozzle
- You can adjust the speed using the slider
- Don’t press the top button – (this will eject the filament to change colour, but takes ages and should only be done by tutors only)
- Place the pen back in the stand when you are finished
- If you want a different colour, swap with someone else of find a spare pen with that colour in
- Hold the tip of the pen very close to or even touching the page, this will make the plastic stick to the laminated sheet
- It works well if you outline the designs, and then shade them in like you would with a normal pen - they can sketch on the tape with a pencil first to give themselves a guide
- If they are stuck for ideas, use Google image search to get some inspiration
Laser Cutter
The laser cutter is different to models you might have seen before - it is a compact design we have produced ourselves specifically for running courses like this. It uses a solid state laser instead of a glass tube, which means it is easy to transport and rugged, requires minimal focusing, and has no expensive/fiddly optics or watercooling systems. It's main limitation is the materials it can cut, which this course has been designed to exploit. It is generally only able to cut materials which are dark in colour, as the laser is in the UV part of the spectrum not IR, so white materials will reflect all of the laser power instead of absorbing it - it cannot cut white paper for example. It is also only a 5W laser (typical glass tube lasers are at least 30W), so the materials it can cut effectively are limited to foams, dark card and engravings only on things like acrylic and wood. It's strengths are Depron foam, which is great for modelling, and other types of foams such as neoprene, and thin black plastics such as HIPS.
Setting up the Machine
- The machine should be setup close to a window, as it has an extractor and hose that must be vented to outside.
- The extractor fan should just be pushed into the hole on the back of the machine. Before you start cutting make sure the air is moving in the right direction!
- The laser should be already focused and cut well at the speeds outlined below - if not you will need to adjust it.
- To focus the laser, load a simple file of a small circle or square and set the speed to 3000 (see next section for how to use laser software). Cut it once, then make a small adjustment to the laser focus by turning the silver ring on the end roughly 1/4 turn in one direction. Cut it again - if the cut width is smaller than the first test, keep making small adjustments and cutting again until the cut width starts getting bigger. If it is bigger, keep adjusting the other way and making test cuts until the cut width is as small as possible. Once the cut line is as small as you can make it, the laser is focussed. It should cut through comfortably at a speed of 3000.
- Max acceleration for both axes (in the Config Tab of Elekscam) should be 1200
General Use Guidelines
- Keep watch for any cables that come loose or are dangling down that could drag over the surface of the item being cut - these are very likely to cause a cut to fail. Do periodic checks by moving the head around manually to check everything is free moving and no cables can catch on anything.
- The clear platens should always be used when cutting the designs for the stacked foam projects - slide the platen and cut parts out together, so they don't fall out, and give the whole thing to the camper so they don't lose track of which piece is which. There are enough platens for 2 per camper (but they mustn't take them home). For this project, there is also a laser printer which should also be connected to the laptop running the laser cutter. Print off the campers' design sheets with the numbers on using the laser printer when you cut their designs out of foam, so they know which piece is which for assembly. See the student guide for the car project for more information on this.
- Use the following speeds for different materials:
- HIPS 0.5mm- Speed 400, raised on a sheet of depron so that the focus of the laser is consistent - the HIPS would be 2.5mm out of focus otherwise (it also bows in the middle as it is very thin)
- Depron speed 3000
- Acrylic 3mm engrave speed 1000
- Neoprene speed 1000
Using the Software
- The software used by the machines is dodgy at best - it's only function is to import SVG files and send the data to the laser. You cannot do any file editing or resizing in the software at all. Your kit will come with a dedicated laptop for running the laser cutter, with the software (EleksCam) already installed. If you need to reinstall for any reason, you can download it here.
- Press the ‘PICCarve’ button, and then load the camper's file from their memory stick
- Highlight the ‘0’ in the ‘speed’ button and change to the speed required (N.B. if you delete this zero first it will crash out, so just overwrite it – doesn’t like having a blank field)
- Click the ‘R-T’ coordinate button (even if it is checked, click it again otherwise it won’t work)
- Put in the foam sheet pushed to the back screw stops, and make sure laser is at back right
- Shut the lid and press start - the machine will cut out the design.
Troubleshooting
- Com port setting is temperamental. Might need to refresh port and/or click on the newly found port once or twice if errors come up about the port being invalid or the something already using the port.
- If port problem still persists, try putting the cable in another USB port and refreshing again
- If lasers cutting erratically, check cables aren’t dragging against foam (move head to all four corners manually and see if foam moves or cables get snagged somewhere when doing so)
- Check focus is correct - see setup notes for how to refocus the laser.
Packing Up
- Make sure all of the campers take home all of their equipment in their named plastic bags.
- Make sure the laser cutter is packed up carefully with all of the sundry items packed as they came
- Any spares should be in bags (not loose in the box), and any broken parts in a separate bag clearly labelled. One or two things that are broken or have been broken for unavoidable reasons is no problem, but lots of broken items should be reported to the Technical Manager ASAP so it can be avoided in the future.