Building the Laser Cutter

As the first group of students to take La Jolla Country Day’s newest course, Design and Innovation, 22 Upper School students in two sections were charged to build a laser cutter—a technology that uses a high-powered beam of focused infrared energy from a CO2 laser to precisely cut or etch materials.

 

The project was built using the Lasersaur project, an open source laser cutter kit design, used by designers, architects and students from Carnegie Mellon University, NYU and MIT. Although sometimes called a “kit,” the Lasersaur is not your average DIY project. Disclaimer: Don’t try this at home.

Design and Innovation Director Mr. Abbondanzio shares that the level of complexity of this project requires immense effort, oversight, problem solving and an abundance of caution.

“Students had to cross reference odd part numbers with the 3D model and make educated guesses and experimentation as to how to put certain critical parts together,” he says. “They also had to design pieces that were purposefully not developed by the project designers. They designed and built their own exhaust system. Rostam Reifschneider ’17 designed the power switch mounting system as one example. They read wiring schematics to determine how to wire the control and power systems by hand. Adriana Goodman ’16 learned a new coding language to configure the wireless mini-computer.”

Project management, learning and developing new skills, and working collaboratively were keys to success.

Rather than using a common, costly and fragile laser cutter bed—a surface for which the material would be placed for cutting—Austin Adzima ’16 decided to design a better solution.

“This was a challenge because it called for a completely new design,” he says. “The old design was a honeycomb sheet that was very expensive and needed to be replaced often. With some help from my teacher, I came up with the idea of using vertical strips of metal, 1½ inches tall, by 33 inches, by 1/16th of an inch thick supported by 3D printed parts I would have to custom design.”

After successfully designing and installing the new bed, Adzima witnessed the speed of which information travels on the internet. Within minutes of uploading and sharing his new design to the Lasersaur community, the design was downloaded several times. By the end of the day, it had been downloaded globally including in Spain and Germany.

“Austin has literally helped make a better world,” says Mr. Abbondanzio. "I hope students learned [from this project] that they can accomplish something bigger than themselves without having done it before or having someone tell them exactly how to do it. Students had to become self-reliant by researching, to self-teach and then teach others in order to be successful.”

After a total of 41 hours building the laser cutter since the beginning of the year, on November 15, students turned on the laser cutter for the first time. The laser cutter can cut cardboard, plywood, acrylic, leather, canvas and more.  

“Everything we do has a purpose, and each new thing we learn is part of a process leading to something bigger,” says Rachel Church ’16. “There is no such thing as busy work in this class because everything we do is important.”

“I am incredibly impressed with the level of professionalism from all these students as they dealt with challenges,” says Mr. Abbondanzio. “Each and every student stretched themselves in one way or another, whether it was working on something they were uncomfortable with, learning new skills, being precise, or in some cases, being less precise. The students should be proud of themselves for accomplishing this major task, and I am very excited about what students will be doing next.”