I use Slicer for Fusion 360, made by Autodesk. It can be used with their Fusion software for 3D designs but Slicer is also usable as a standalone product.
Take an .STL file from Thingiverse or perhaps it's a file you have crafted yourself. I used this rubber duck file:
When imported into Slicer you'll notice the duck is facing "down." You can change this in the import dialog box; I changed the axis to "Z."
Manufacturing settings: these settings are different depending on the material you are using. For the duck, I used 12"x20" cardboard sheets ordered from Uline, they fit the Dremel LC40 perfectly. The thickness of 4mm was the hardest measurement to finalize. Slot offset can introduce some wiggle room to your interlocks; I leave it at 0. Tool diameter refers to the thickness or kerf of your cutting tool; for the laser I just opted for 0, though average laser cut width is about .012mm.
The object size section is how large your finished 3D object will be. I leave this as default until I am ready to adjust the final sheets. Making the measurements smaller will reduce the number of sheets needed and increasing the measurements will maximize the use of available area, reducing waste.
Construction technique changes how the 3D object will be constructed. I am using radial slices to make the duck look a little more interesting. I did "By count" as the method meaning I can change how many slices there will be. Adding more slices adds more detail but involves more slices, which uses more material. The thicker the material the less number of slices you can have since you'd eventually end up with just stacked slices.
Notch factor and notch angle cuts notches in your slots to make sliding easier. For cardboard this seems unnecessary but for harder materials I can see the benefit.
You can now click on slices in the preview and manually move them around. This is helpful if you see blue sections that signify pieces that are floating and not joined to anything, or red pieces that signify impossible-to-fit pieces. In either of those colours you should adjust something to make sure the pieces can be cut and fit.
Slice direction is useful if you want to manually change the axis or direction of slices. This was useful for the duck to make sure it was symmetrical and the slices showed off the best contours of the shape.
Assembly steps is incredibly useful since it shows an animation of how the slices fit into each together. This makes it easier for students to visualize how the model comes together since it even shows the texture of the corrugated cardboard! Also handy if you are making step-by-step instructions and need some screenshots.
Now click "Get plans" and export as .EPS files. You may also want to save it as a Fusion file since that will save all your manufacturing settings:
Since the Dremel is picky in its colour-coding I open these EPS files in Illustrator and make the following adjustments:
- Select all
- Change stroke size to 0.5 (can go to 0.1 but it's hard to see lines that narrow)
- Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork
- Change red to green (to let cutter score the numbers instead of cutting them)
- Change blue to red (signifying cut lines)
- Usually there is a rectangle bounding box around the objects. Select the whole box with the Direct Selection tool (white arrow) and delete so the cutter doesn't make unnecessary cuts.
- Save as an Illustrator file and also as a plain .PDF
The PDF file can now be imported in the laser cutter and cut!
