Before going over our different materials and tools, I had no prior experience to using a laser cutting machine. I already knew some information about the materials and the different tools that we used; however, I had never learned how many ways we could use all the different tools. Laser cutting has always been something that has interested me since I did woodshop in middle school. There were many classes like this that were offered at my high school, but I was unable to fit them into my schedule due to prior commitments.
Overall, my experience was very positive when learning how to use the laser cutting machine. I relied heavily on the instruction paper we were given out as there were a lot of steps to follow. The beginning steps were very easy to follow, and I felt comfortable doing them, but I got confused at the ending steps with completing the key chain. The first time I tried to make the keychain I ended up making a mistake somewhere along the way because my keychain was not centered, and the lettering was off the keychain.
When I realized it was not right it was already too late to try and stop it. I’m still not sure where I messed up in my first attempt, but I repeated the process and tried again and managed to successfully make the keychain the second time. The second time around I made sure that I read every single step multiple times to make sure I was doing them correctly. I was very happy with how my keychain turned out once I got a hang of the activity.
I learned from our class how to use a laser cutting machine and what purposes it has. I never knew that there are two different categories: raster etching and vector cutting. Both terms were known to me, but I feel like I got a very good understand of what they are and how they are different. Raster etching is used to fill in the outlines made by vector cutting. Being able to try and draw both methods was very interesting and helped me understand what each method was and was used for.
I also learned how to measure the thickness of materials with different types of tools. I didn’t realize that how many different types of tools there were to measure materials, and I found it very interesting how they were all kind of similar but were different at the same time.