T&T Part 2, Week 6: Study visit to FabU cafe!

In this week's workshop, we went to a cafe near Sunway Pyramid that offers classes and services in "FABRICATION". iS tHiS tHe RiGhT tErM? I think that's the fancy term for it, but technically it's digital fabrication where people can make their 2D design into 3D. They have 3D printers, laser engraving machines, embroidery machines, and so on.

But in today's class, we did something simple, which is laser engraving!

So, first things first, we need to create an Illustrator file which the logo or illustration we want to engrave.

In the end, I chose this leaf illustration to be engraved on the acrylic board.

I've cleaned out the lines, make sure there no overlapping lines, but to my surprise, when I ask if it's ok to overlap in the engraving, the PIC said it doesn't really matter cause we're just engraving it.

But there's still some settings and rules to make the engravings, so we edited the rest at the cafe.

The size was set to 50mm x 50mm, and you need another layer of an outline around the leaf so the machine can detect which should be engraved and which should be laser cut.

And we also added a smol hole to put the keychain in.

After all is set up, we were told to choose a material to engrave on and I choose a clear acrylic board, just because I think it'll look better with the white lines engraved on.

After engraving, the keychain had a few burn marks on the side so I removed it by smoothening it with a nail file.