Laser cut gear clock - with ChronoDot!

Step 4 Cutting the Clock file on the Laser

Using the file Gearclock3.svg and LVL1's Lasercutter, I cut the clock out of 1/8" plywood that I purchased at Michaels.  I am sure you could use other materials, and I will probably make an acrylic clock sometime.

To cut the clock on our laser, I printed to the Retina Engrave software that came with our laser.  Retina engrave allows you to control the laser based upon which colors are in your file.  For example, I set the laser to cut completely though the plywood when the color is black and engrave only a little when the color is purple.

To cut 1/8" birch plywood on our 40W laser I use a setting of 30% cut speed and 100% power.  To engrave on our laser, I use a setting of 100% cut speed and 25% power.  The order is what order the laser uses.  I engrave (purple) first, then cut the red and then cut the black.  I set the repeats to 0 for green, because I do not want to cut any green.  It really is not as difficult as it seems.