Laser Cutter Kerf Tutorial
MATERIALS:
Digital Calipers: https://amzn.to/3iDgBZh
I'm going to explain how to adjust kerf to fit two laser-cut pieces perfectly together! First, it's important to understand what kerf is. Kerf is the amount of extra material that is burned away when laser cutting this happens because the laser beam is slightly bigger than the design.
When creating your design you need to account for that extra space that is going to be burned away in order for the pieces to fit perfectly together.
For materials, you're going to need digital calipers.
We need to figure out three measurements:
1. Kerf Adjustment
2. Height of Slot
3. Width of Slot
Here are the 3 Equations:
1. Kerf Adjustment
Intended Cut - Actual Cut = Kerf
Subtract the actual cut size from the intended cut size to get the kerf. Laser cut a square on your machine and then measure it with digital calipers. Say you make the square 1" wide, and the actual measurement is .99" then you would subtract .99" from 1" to get a kerf of .01".
We need to find the measurements of the slot in which the design will be placed into.
2. Height of Slot
Material Thickness - Kerf = Slot Height
Subtract the kerf from the material thickness. Measure the material that you will be using for your project with digital calipers. Often times material is not the exact thickness as it's supposed to be, so it's important to measure it.
3. Width of Slot
Intended Object Width - Kerf = Slot Width
Subtract the kerf from your intended object width to get the slot width. The intended object width is the size that you make the wedge of the design in your design program. The wedge is the part that will slide into the slot. Here is an example of the wedge part of a design:
Now that you have figured out your measurements, create your design and base in a vector program such as Adobe Illustrator. Next save your design as an SVG and upload to the Glowforge app for printing!
Thanks for reading!
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