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#Flatbed cutting
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This week I used a flatbed cutter to make an origami laptop stand.
###Contents
1. Introduction
2. Designing for Flatbed cutting
3. Setup
4. Cutting
5. Folding
6. References
7. Design files
---
1. Introduction
---
A Digital flatbed cutters are the perfect solution for prototyping and producing packaging, displays, textiles, and signage. They are easy to operate with short set-up times. The wide range of tools and add-ons make them extremely versatile for a multitude of applications such as . They are integral for commercial signage, display, packaging, PPE and specialty manufacturing and cutting applications. They are widely used in rapid manufacturing, specialty manufacturing and prototyping applications.
A flatbed cutter basically has a knife blade on a pivoting point to cut through material like paper, vinyl, cardboard, foam board, some plastics and films. It can also have other tools like a pen to draw in large format, a creasing tool, etc.
I wanted to learn about different basic operations of the cutter like cutting, half-cuts and creasing.
Half-cuts and creasing both allow for folding in opposite directions. For this I chose an origami based project so I could explore folding in both directions - mountains and valleys.
I found this laptop stand design by [Grape Lab](https://thegrapelab.org/en/) that I thought was interesting to make.
FabLabSP has a [JWEI](https://www.jweicut.com/cb08ii.html) cutter that I used.
It has a precision of +/-0.01mm, and can be used with a variety of tools like oscillating knife, offset knife, rotary knife, snip knife, cursor, drawing... It can cut materials including UV material, outdoor printing fabric, light sheet, gridding cloth, flag fabric, stickers, KT board, PVC expansion sheet, corrugated paper, honey comb board etc. upto 50mm thickness depending on the material and the tool selected.
2. Designing for Flatbed Cutting
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Unlike lasercutting and CNC milling, flatbed cutting doesn't have any kerf, because the blade is simply slicing through material like a vinyl cutter.
I made my CAD in Rhino. Separated different operations by layers.
Note that for the software to recognize these layers, they have to be named exactly like defined in the Rolling locator.
Meaning tool K (Pen 1) - Cut
Tool K1 (Pen 2)- Creaseline
Tool K-half (Pen 3)- V-cut
3. Setup
K-action
K1-action
K and K-half is done with the same tool, but at different heights (z-axis).
For 3mm cardboard I used K-half at 5mm.
For juteboard I used thickness of 0.5mm and K-half at 0.9mm. This is the +ve Z distance from the bed level.
4. Cutting
Home
Inching
Set origin
