Portable Laser Cutting

Laser-cut 3D models found in repositories tend to be basic and trivial-models build over long periods of time and by multiple designers are few/non existent. I argue that this is caused by a lack of an exchange format that would allow continuing the work. At first glance, it may seem like such a format already exist, as laser cut models are already widely shared in the form of 2D cutting plans. However, such files are susceptible to variations in cutter properties (aka kerf) and do not allow modifying the model in any meaningful way (no adjustment of material thickness, no parametric changes, etc.). My first take on the challenge is to see how far we can get by still building on the de-facto standard, i.e., 2D cutting plans. springFit [7] and kerf-canceling mechanisms [6] tackle the challenge by rewriting 2D cutting plans, replacing non-portable elements with portable ones (shown in Figure 1). However, this comes at a cost of extra incisions, reducing the structural integrity of models and impacting aesthetic qualities and rare mechanisms or joints may go undetected. I thus take a more radical approach, which is to move on to a 3D exchange format (kyub [1]). This eliminates these challenges as it guarantees portability by gener-ating a new machine-specific 2D file for the local machine. Instead, it raises the question of compatibility: Files already exist in 2D-how to get them into 3D? I demonstrate a software tool that automatically reconstructs the 3D geometry of the model encoded in a 2D cutting plan, allows modifying it using a 3D editor, and re-encodes it to a 2D cutting plan. I demonstrate how this approach allows me to make a much wider range of modifications, including scaling, changing material thickness, and even remixing mod-els. The transition from sharing machine-oriented 2D cutting files, to 3D files, enables users worldwide to collaborate, share, and reuse. And thus, to move on from users starting thousands of trivial models from scratch to collaborating on big complex projects.