Kresty working on Fusion Power Generator

[kresty]

Well, since Savage posted those wonderful plans, I'm thinking about a Fusion Generator.  I'm not really sure if I'm really doing it - but it seems like I'm doing at least part of it...

Along the lines of the "having a hammer, everything's a nail" philosophy, I don't have ready access to a CnC - but there is a laser cutter in the work garage.  It also gives me an excuse to play with styrene on the cutter.

I managed to get some 1/16" styrene, so here are the 1/16" bits.  Additionally I included one of the top fins just as a sanity check, this is the wrong thickness for that, but since Savage's plans have those 3D printed instead of laser cut, I thought I'd see how it looked.

1/16" Flat Pack bits for Fusion Generator - Laser Cut

The laser bed I have access to is only 18x24", so this was done in two passes.  The "grill" had to be chopped in half to fit, and I had to split the medium band strips.  To utilize the space/material I decided to chop it in 2/3 and 1/3  (The long bands were too long for Savage's CnC, so those were already split, as seen on the bottom 4 strips above).

As I mentioned, I haven't cut styrene with the laser before, so this was new.  There was a little charring on the bottom of a sample I'd done, so I tried putting some paper underneath.  That was a total failure as the paper tried to melt to the plastic, and the plastic itself burned a lot.  Unfortunately, the cut depth was pretty inconsistent, burning too hot in places and not quite cutting through in others.  This was our Universal at 100% power, 11% speed, 500hz.  I was able to pop out most of the almost-cut-through spots, and overall it seemed successful – though I am a bit concerned about burning the 1/8th inch when I get to that.  (It’d need 5% speed or some such, and presumably the too-much-cut/too-little-cut differences would be exaggerated.)

[kresty]

I mentioned that I'd redone the fins as flatpack.  Savage's 3D plans had them 3D printed, but they're pretty much flat 3mm pieces, except a slight rounding at the top.  I was curious how well those would cut vs print (I may do both for a few to see how it goes).  Laser cut is much faster for the 11 of those...

Anyhoo, here's a PDF of the outline I used for those (click to go to file)

[kresty]

So these are the files I used to cut the 1/16" laser cut parts:

Alternate Plat Pack Files intended for 18x24 Laser Cutter
Beta - currently only has 1/16" parts.

The cut lines are set to 0.0096pt and RGB Black 0 0 0 - Our Universal uses the color to key off of, the Epilog uses the narrow line width to key off of. I could send the PDF files to either.

As mentioned above, this was my first attempt cutting styrene and the results were a little inconsistent, not quite cutting through in places, and burning too much in others.

[kresty]

We have a bunch of projects, so I'll probably procrastinate on this one for a while, it may be a bit before I get to cutting the 1/8" styrene.

[kresty]

Hmmpfh. Went to the work maker garage to cut the 1/8" bits but my lines in the PDF were mostly too thick so laser didn't want to cut Have to tweak/reexport everything.

Did cut some sections for the clear bits from the acrylic commercial 2x4 light diffusers, so at least that seems like it works.

Also I got the settings OK for cutting and "etching" the deep grooves where Savage had grooves. (The other option would be to add another ring to seat the vertical parts against.

[kresty]

Hmm, laser got some dirty (smokey). These are the first 3mm cuts (it's cutting the next-to-last sheet as I speak).

Isopropanol helped a little, at least it's not getting on my hands now.  Should be able to paint it.

The etched notch seems to be OK so far - took forever to etch that deep though.  A little over 1mm; good enough I hope.

Something's wrong with my updated PDF's, file size is too big, I'll look @ that tomorrow.  I must have unnecessary info in the new files.

[kresty]

Translucent bits - laser cut cast acrylic like from fluorescent light diffusers. First one is "nearly full size" but I'm not sure it'll be long enough, so I cut others as halves.

I wasn't sure which diffuser I wanted, so I cut both... Savage has spec'd the top one, but I'm intending the bottom one for the inner "bucket" edge around the grill-y part.

[savagecreature]

Somehow watching your build is much more exciting than doing mine. It's looking awesome!

[kresty]

Somehow watching your build is much more exciting than doing mine. It's looking awesome!

Oops, maybe I should stop then! 

I was expecting to be held up by the 3D Prints (lazy), but I remembered the print farm last week and now most of them are in the queue...  The ones that aren't are ones I'm trying different positions for to make sure they come out OK.  

I'm a little worried about my ability to finish it/make it look good.  I'm sure I could do prop quality (props are usually horrid), but display quality?  I'm probably going to rely on weathering a bit.

[kresty]

Not sure how interesting more parts are, but for completeness, here are the other 2 1/8" sheets.

Note that I cut some of Savage's 1/2 rings as full rings.