Laser Zone Audit 9-14-15

Basic Info

• Zone: Laser Zone
• Coordinator: Mike Fink
• Square footage used: 180

Facilities Needs

• Power
  • Have 2 15-amp circuits
  • Require 3 15-amp circuits (1 per laser, 1 for chillers)
• Compressed Air
  • Have air lines run to each laser. Further improvements are planned/in works
• Ventilation
  • Have working exhaust system. Addition of a ground level filter would be helpful.
• Water - NO
• Sewer - NO
• Lighting
  • Pretty good, could use an additional light above Wolverine
• Network/server space
  • Request for dedicated network cable – currently borrowing one from large format printer
  • i3fileshare and local storage on laser laptop work well
• Gas - NO

Environmental Needs

• AC - NO
• climate control - NO
• Heat – Only as much as the rest of the shop
• Acoustic Need - NO
• Noise Produced - Yes
• Needs clean environment - NO
• Produces mess - Yes, fine particulate
• Chemical hazards
  • Smoke produced when cutting anything is inherently toxic, ventilation mitigates this.
  • Potential serious/deadly hazards if banned materials are cut.
• PPE needed - NO
• Fire hazards
  • Any material being laser cut is potentially a fire hazard. Airflow mitigates this.
  • Most likely situation for fire is a laser software malfunction without operator present.

Scope & Direction

• Scope
  • Precision cutting and etching of wood, acrylic, other safe plastics, leather, rubber, cardboard, paper, fabric, glass, foam, metals, etc. Additional processing of acrylic (strip heater)
• Goals
  • Primary: Have well maintained laser cutters and provide training in their use
  • Secondary: Provide training in vector art design as it relates to laser cutting
• Equipment, and how it fits into the scope
  • Laser cutters – do the cutting
  • Laptop – Work on designs, control the lasers
  • Rotary tools – Allow for etching round objects
  • Strip heater – for bending acrylic, usually after being laser cut
  • Scrap materials storage – a place for members to leave leftover materials for open use
• What should the zone NOT be used for?
  •  ??

• Direction for 2016
  • Get the shop air line installation finished.
  • Get users trained on the rotary tools
  • Train more trainers
  • Continue training users with demand (typically proportional to number of new members)

Interaction/Synergy with other zones - cross utilization of resources

• Compute zone (?) – Adobe Creative Suite
• Wood shop – materials storage, use of tools, especially panel saw
• CNC zone – new Solid Edge station could be useful in designing for the laser cutter

Similar equipment in the space

• Fab Lab - Full Spectrum could be moved to laser zone to free up space in the fab lab

Traffic

• Unique member usage – 20-40 (est)
• Frequency/hours of use – 21 hours a month cut time, 100 hours a month
• Number of trainers - 7
• Number of classes held – Ad hoc classes lately, about 3/month
• Attendence at classes – 1-3 people

Coolness

• External recognition – Siemens/Solid Edge demo stuff
• Notable/documented projects made in the zone – my chandeliers, jamie’s cape, certainly others that currently escape me
• Maker Faire projects/Press – many maker faire projects
• Attractive for new members - yes

Self-sufficiency - Does the zone make enough in donations to support itself for new materials?

• Yes, all use of the zone is donation supported

Major issues with zone operation

• Unused/underused equipement and why
  • Strip heater – limited use cases
  • Rotary tools - limited knowledge
• Equipment with repeated downtime and why
  • Bumblebee – sees a lot of use, shoddy conversion at the factory from 240V to 120V so many internal electrical components are not rated for the current run through them
• Other issues
  • New tools that I’m still figuring out
  • Have not held training classes on them yet
  • Some overlap with sand blaster