Laser Cutting

Only users who have completed the Digital Fabrication Badge (DF) can access the Laser Cutters in the DFL

Booking System Information

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bookings can be made up to 7 days in advance - spots will be limited and operate on a first come first serve basis.
Bookings can be made in 30min allotments
Cost will be $15/30mins booking plus the material costs
Payment must be made on arrival before using the machines.
On arrival please check in with staff.
Maximum 2 people are allowed per booking
A time limit of 1hrs per student per week may apply during peak assessment times.

Laser Cutting Instructions

Arrive 5-10 minutes before your booking begins to select and purchase your material
If you are unsure if your file is correctly set up, arrive 15 minutes early and ask for assistance
If you are late, or lose a portion of your allocated time due to file issues, you will not be awarded additional time to complete your laser cutting
If you have not arrived 10mins into your booking, staff may allocate the machine to another student
A maximum of two persons per laser cutting booking are permitted in the Dig Fab Lab
You must plan you laser cutting time well - you cannot run over your allotted time and disadvantage the next student’s booking time so please make sure you use your time efficiently and come to your booking fully prepared

Cancellations

Cancellations must be made 3 or more hours before the start time of your booking
Cancellations made in under 3 hours will still incur a fee ($15/30mins) and will also count towards your 1 hour maximum usage per week

Materials

On arrival to your appointment you must first purchase the materials you will be cutting. You are not to begin cutting until you have paid for your materials. If you purchased your materials prior to your laser cutting booking (the day prior, for example) you must bring your receipt of purchase otherwise it will be assumed that you need to pay for those materials.
External material is no longer permitted in the lasers, you will need to purchase all of your laser cutting materials from the shop. This will ensure that you get good cutting results as you will be using material that we are familiar with, this will help us keep potentially harmful materials out of the Dig Fab Lab. The one exception to this rule is coloured acrylic (as we do not and do not plan to stock brightly coloured acrylic). We are committed to stocking useful materials in the shop, if we are not stocking a material which is being requested frequently we will look into the safety, cost and availability of this material

Place your design in the laser cutting template provided
Instructions are provided in the template file
Templates are available in Rhino (.3dm), AutoCad (.dwg) or Illustrator (.ai). You can import many file types into these templates (.dxf, vectorised .pdf, .svg etc)
There are different templates for each different laser cutting machine, make sure you use the correct template for your laser cutting booking

Trotec Speedy 360

Bed size: 800x500mm

Illustrator Template Rhino Template

Trotec Speedy 500

Bed size: 1220x700mm

Illustrator Template Rhino Template

Respecting the staff and equipment within the Digital Fabrication Lab
You understand that you must always wear closed in shoes, appropriate clothing and have your hair tied back in the Dig Fab Lab
You understand that you should not bring food and drink into the lab
You understand that you must never leave the machine unattended or ignore staff instructions.

If you do not follow staff instruction you will be asked to leave the Dig Fab Lab and either have your access removed for a period of time or join our re-training program depending on staff discretion