Complex Stencil Cutting

The most recent effort with the laser involved several changes to the procedure:

1. Many support blades were removed to decrease the amount of debris that needed cleaning after the cutting. Fewer support blades also mean that the underside of the plexiglass was LESS likely to chip. The trade off is that there may a bit more bounce when doing the auto-focus, though if starting at a corner this is not so big a consideration. There is also the extra time involved with removing and replacing support blades.

2. I am now using 3 standardized cuts: inner, middle and outer circles. This will allow me to interchange sections of one stencil with a different one to multiply the number of design combinations.

3. The whole deal is getting ready for Hollywood! Not really, but I did capture video and post processed to reduce background and added in photos to tell a nice story. I used Audacity to clean up the noise in the audio track and Movie Maker and YTD Downloader to produce slideshow videos and convert movies to AVI.


I did have one element that was too close to the outer circle cut that soon cracked off after handling. Next time I will be more careful to stay farther from the edge and use masking tape on the backside to hold marginal pieces in place. I still have the inner shape intact so the stencil is still quite usable.

Stencil before and after cleaning with rubbing alcohol
click on the links, then click again on the photos to zoom 
or the video thumbnail to play

Photo link: Before cleaning

Photo link: After Cleaning


Video to introduce the laser cutting process


Video: The stencil actually getting cut