[Noisebridge-discuss] Laser cutting layers of book pages.

[Ari Lacenski]

+1 to milling with a rounded mill bit. Not an end mill.
Room-temperature solid lube might help (vaseline? if 'twere me I'd use
chapstick because duh.)

I think it would have taken the same amount of time to lasercut a hard
jig form, clamp it tightly to the book and use that as your (painfully
eighteenth-century I know... rather like acid-decaying books) (wait
for it...) x-acto knife (AGH!) template. Or combine the hard
protective jig with the milling option if you really want to be back
in the twenty-first.

Ari


On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 1:55 PM, miloh <froggytoad at gmail.com> wrote:
> You could create a special jig for this single book project. Sounds
> like a lot of fine work for a one-off.
>
> You could do the work with a simpler cover holding & page holding jig,
> and then invest a bit of design time instead, trying multiple passes
> to cut the book without any adjustment to the fixture or jig other
> than pass cleanup and automated or manual refocusing.
>
> I'm thinking you could generate a cutting plan with multiple nestled
> images of slightly decreasing size.  The step angle doesn't have to be
> very great. Each cut pass will just cut through the optimum number of
> pages depending on the laser optics.  Fasten or bind the book pages
> extremely well, the laser works better in harder material where the
> optics don't travel in free space or uneven distances.    The
> sequential cuts occur slightly inside the previous ones.
>
> The resulting cut will have a slight vertical bevel, which could be
> unnoticeable really, the amount depends on the degree of shrink per
> step due to consideration of the optics.
>
> or why not try milling a filleted shape out?
>
> On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Rubin Abdi <rubin at starset.net> wrote:
>> Last night, not with Noisebridge's laser, I attempted to cut an alcove
>> out of the center pages of a very crappy and deteriorating hard back
>> book to fit some sort of pocket computer/phone like object. There were a
>> lot of problems that I encountered.
>>
>> Specifically I could only cut a hand full of sheets before needing to
>> flip back some of the already cut pages and refocus the laser. Cutting
>> at a higher power/slower speed wasn't an option as the pages would
>> easily catch on fire. While flipping pages back and taping them down,
>> the alignment of the stack of pages I'm lasering would shift around (due
>> to the spine moving) and so the cut out would happen at an angle, which
>> sort of sucks if you're making a thing to fit a device snug.
>>
>> Anyhow, has anyone tried something like this before? Got any tips or
>> tricks? The only solution I have right now is to rip the binding out (no
>> easy task without destroying pages) cut layer by layer, rebind the whole
>> thing.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> --
>> Rubin
>> rubin at starset.net
>>
>>
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