Milwaukee Makerspace Wiki

• Anna Kirch (champion)
• Ellen Fulton (co-champion)
• Raymond Cashaw (co-champion)

Any member can reach all of us - in the case of damage, an issue, suggestion or concern by emailing laser (at) milwaukeemakerspace (dot) org laser@milwaukeemakerspace.org In case of Fire or immediate need, please use text or phone on the trainer contact list

Remember to communicate any downtime, damage, or repairs or tinkering to the champions BEFORE doing the work. Purchases of items must be pre-approved but the champions in order to receive reimbursement.

Lay-Z or Lazee= Certified Laser User

If you are new to lasers, these trainings are offered as requested. - while space is open to the general membership, space is limited to 3 people at a time at each location. Email Laser@milwaukeemakerspace.org with your name, your phone number, and when you are available for trainings and one of the team will reach out to you. PLEASE keep in mind that trainers are volunteers and may not be available right away. Each training session lasts approximately 2.5-3 hours depending on how many are in the class.

Please do not set a deadline or expectation on a project on any tools you are not yet trained on at the makerspace and expect trainers to help you adhere to those deadlines. Some tools, such as the lasers, require training and practice. You are going to want to practice on non-important projects first. Test out your materials and your power settings. Trainers are not responsible for your deadlines. Everyone here is a volunteer and can be burnt out easily.

ULS lasers use a print driver so that you can make cuts from almost any software: CorelDraw, Inkscape, MS Word, .PDF files, etc. All these machines have a limit of cutting 1/4“ thick material.

The machines located in the Lenox Laser Lab are named Left Shark, Katy Perry, Right Shark.
There are two new machines in the East Room named Baby Shark and Jabberjaw.
There is also a ULS machine in the East Room not currently hooked up.
Read more about the Laser Cutter Venting System at Lenox.

• Anna Kirch
• Ellen Fulton
• Raymond Cashaw
• Casey Van Groll

• Help Wanted*

Boss Laser trainings will be offered on Mondays at 6pm by Carl Stevens in tandem with Model Mondays (and cancelled when that meeting is cancelled.) Confirm on the message board or reach out directly if a different time is needed or if you will be in attendance. It is required that you complete Lenox Laser trainings before you attend a training at Norwich. Boss trainings can also be done as requested by emailing Lasers@milwaukeemakerspace.org and asking for Harvey or Anna to train you.

Boss Laser uses “Lightburn” and has a limit of 1/4” material without extra burning and passes. It has a large bed, and while the wattage is higher, the focal length decreases to power of the machine. This means that in the lower right hand corner of the bed, your power is about 70W, not 100W.

The Boss does NOT have auto-focus. Please do not ever use the auto-focus feature in lightburn or on the machine.

• Carl Stevens
• Anna Kirch
• Harvey Matyas Trainer
• Megan Colby *Trainer in training
• Dave Pingel *Trainer in training

We now have trainers for the ULS Rotary Device at Lenox! (Norwich Rotary Tool coming soon!)

• See Ellen or Anna Kirch for training

• Tony
• Dan J.
• looking for other trainers and maintainers, contact Anna or Ellen to step up and get involved!

• When: Third Thursday of every month in the Lenox meeting room at 6:30 PM
• What: Learn basics and some advanced features of our design programs, Corel and Inkscape. Some Blender courses may be taught in the future.
• What about the Cocktails and Charcuterie: Bring yourself a fun drink (boba tea, starbucks, whatever you want) and a snack (there may be a charcuterie board provided) to enjoy while you learn.
• Different themes every month.
• Two laptops available to use to play along in CorelDraw

• WHAT NOT TO LASER
• WHAT YOU CAN LASER CUT
• WHAT YOU CAN ETCH/RASTER

• If your project is going to take more than 1 1/2 hours or you need more than one cutter, please reserve the laser cutter on the members-only email list as far as you can in advance. Give grace to any overlap and work it out with other users - we are a shared resource. You may not use all 3 lasers at one time. If you are using 2 lasers, please ensure that you will be able to be off of one laser within 10-15 minutes of somebody needing it.

• If you have scrap to put in the hack rack, please cut it down to get rid of unusable parts.

• DO NOT MESS WITH THE ADVANCED SETTINGS ON THE LENOX PRINT DRIVERS. DO NOT ADJUST THE ORIGIN ON THE MACHINES THEMSELVES.

• BOSS: If you adjust settings on Lightburn, please be a doll and put them back to normal. Lightburn can be customized in many ways, but most of our users do not know how to use advanced settings. Don't be responsible for ruining somebody else's piece.

• BOSS: Don't adjust the machine settings. Everything is controlled from the computer.

• NEVER EVER EVER USE AUTO FOCUS. It's broken. It will crash the bed.

• Check your optics before you start! If the optics are dirty, you will get a bad cut, but more importantly, dirty optics can crack the lens, and decrease the lifespan of the laser tube.

• Inspect and the optics after you're done. This is being excellent to the next member by cleaning up after yourself, and it will give us a signal on the cameras that any lens related problems are not the result of your inaction.

• Do not disable safety interlocks without explicit per-instance approval from a laser co-champion.

• Any print jobs left completely unattended will be immediately stopped. IF YOU FIND THE LAB UNATTENDED WITH THE LASER RUNNING, take a hot minute, to wait (or holler) for a person to return. If they do not return in 3-5 minutes, you are fully authorized to stop the job by turning off the power. Stopping the job will ruin the material and cause the work to be repeated, so take this into consideration.

• Donation guidelines When using the laser cutters, please abide by the honor system and contribute accordingly. 1$/cut or 5$/hour, plus something for your material if taken from the hackrack.

• Additionally, If you are making a profit from something at the space (laser cutter or otherwise) the guidelines for the whole makerspace and all the collective tools are that you should be contributing 5% of your intended asking price(not profit realized) towards the machines you are using, in order to pay for their upkeep, and wear and tear. Each recharge of the laser tube costs $2000. If you are an LLC, you need to donate.

• Remember to price your items accordingly and include this donation in your cost calculations.
• Please remember that even if you are running your business on these machines, you have no more right to use the machines than any other member. If your business model in the long term depends solely on a makerspace community resource, its time to re-examine your business model.

• Use the Honeycomb hooks to hold slightly curvy wood to the laserbed
• Lift material that doesn't have a back covering with non reflective materials ( scrap material, or wood) to reduce the chance of the honeycomb bed printing on the back side of your piece. a 1/2 cm or more is helpful.
• MOAR POWAH isn't always better. Some materials burn/char and fuse back together. Test your materials to find the sweetspot for your project.
• Use the transfer tape to help align your piece for repeated passes aligning lasering on the reverse, and use up scraps without frustration or playing with the x-y access settings.
• Midland plastics in New Berlin is a great place to buy acrylic in person. If you want to order online, there are a plethora of places that sell acrylic in all colors.
• X-tool has been making some really fun laserable material. Rubber stamp sheets, laserable leatherette, silicone watch bands, and various other materials.

How to connect your own laptop/ PC to the Makerspace network and print to the lasers from your own technology and licenses

• Test your materials!
• Do not mess with the deep settings, it will ruin someones day.
• Break up BIG jobs/ complex vectors or rasters to reduce the chance that it could choke on the file.

• The Hairline setting for Inkscape is .001 INCHES - this may make the line invisible when working in the program, but it will appear when you export it to print.
• To print inkscape files, export to PDF and print from adobe reader.

• DO NOT MESS WITH THE SETTINGS ON THE MACHINE
• If you know how to do the advanced settings on lightburn, make sure you put the settings back after use. You will otherwise ruin somebody's day.
• Lightburn is more of a production software than a design software
• more TBD

• When using imported purchased files into CorelDraw, and it “throws zeros” on the laser display, there may be artifacts from the previous creators. You can select all and make global changes and if that doesn't resolve the issue, under the view menu, choose “wireframe” and make the changes there.
• Make sure your colors are exactly the colors the lasers use and only those colors.

• Don't watch the laser when doing glass. It flashes and will hurt your eyes.
• Use basic images. High detail images don't come out as clear.
• Utilize Ellen's instructions for setting up the device, rather than the book. There are steps left out in the book.

• 1/11 Anna
  • Greg Waldo
  • Paige Zeitlow
• 2/1 Anna
  • Madison Sternig
  • Rue Gupta
• 2/3 Raymond
  • Ed Mastrangeli
• 3/1 Anna and Casey
  • Jackie Valadez
  • Alec Dolter
• 3/10 Casey
  • Krista Doelder
  • Maxwell Rackmill
  • Alan Leon
• 3/10 Raymond
  • Lars Larsen
  • Don Haynes
  • Jason Moore
• 3/14 Casey
  • John Michels
  • Monica Troxell
• 3/16 Anna
  • Tom Cullen
  • Emma Sutherland
  • Eric Jarve
• 3/30 Casey
  • Elle Russo
  • Tom Sievert
  • Jolie Parchmont

Laser Lab Archive History of Lasercutters and exhaust technology in the history of the Milwaukee Makerspace pre 2022.