Laser Meetup

Overview

Laser Meetup is on the 2nd Sunday of each month from 12pm - 4pm.

Come hang out, and cut and engrave projects with the laser cutters. No experience necessary!

Time on the lasers is first-come, first-served, but priority will be given to projects that are ready-to-cut and will take less than 30 minutes.

If you don't have a project yet, just come out and learn! We have some small examples you can quickly cut to get experience.

What to Bring

You'll want approved material to cut, such as:

• Plywood up to 12mm thick
• Acrylic (be ready to tell us what brand and type it is!)
• Cardboard
• Medium-Density Fiberboard

If you don't have material, we do have scraps available to use for practice but be aware these tend to be small.

Some materials are NEVER allowed, including:

• PVC or anything that may contain PVC; it releases toxic gas when cut! If there's any doubt, you won't be allowed to cut it, so be ready to tell us what brand and version of material you have.
• Vinyl
• Metal (not even for engraving)

None of these items is required, but bringing them will help ensure your project is successful:

• A laptop. (We also have a limited number of desktop machines available.)
• A complete design file in a vector format such as .SVG or .DXF.
• A USB thumb drive. (Or you can connect to our wifi and save files on our network drive.)
• Design software such as:
  • Inkscape (steep learning curve, but free, open-source, and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux)
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Any other software that can export .SVG and/or .DXF.

Laser Certification

While you will learn a lot attending this event, it will not make you certified to use the laser on your own.

There is a separate 3 hour training that covers a lot of safety and more details about the proper usage and problems you may encounter. More info here: Laser Certification