Ever see a co2 laser/inkjet printer Combo?

[Al Stewart]

I came across a slide show at http://www.digitalimagesgroup.us/
which shows a Versalaser with what looks like a built in printer. The company claims they can make photos printed on foamboard which are cutout to form a sculpture.

In theory, it would be plausible to attach a print head to the laser carriage without removing the optics, but I have never heard of it being done.

Anybody seen this done?

Al

[Joe Pelonio]

I doubt that Al. Think about it, to protect your idea, you photoshop a mysterious print head onto a laser so competitors think you have something they don't. By the description " photos printed on foamboard which are cutout to form a sculpture" it sound like they do it the same way as the rest of us.

[Al Stewart]

Maybe it's wishful thinking that somebody could print and cut in the same machine. I have never been able to successfully place a print in my Versalaser and have the laser cut where I expected it to. When making a photo sculpture, a registration error of even .002" will show too much to sell.

If you could print in the laser then there would be no registration problem.

I'd LOVE to hear from anybody that has a solution.

Al

[Joe Pelonio]

I do a fair amount of them, mostly logos which are even tighter registration than photos of people. Here's how I do it on my 12"x24" laser, using the same eps file for printing and cutting. Set up the file with hairlines around the objects to be cut but make the ones around the objects white so they don't print

- Print a hairline black line rectangle 11.5"x23.5" with as many of the graphic objects as will fit nested inside the rectangle

- Cut the same rectangle from the material (in my case mostly 1/8" or 1/4" acrylic) from a 12x24 sheet, taped into the laser around the edges. Remove the rectangle and leave the "frame' in place

- Cut the printed adhesive film with Olfa knife and metal straight edge exactly on the outside of the lines

- Apply the vinyl to the cut sheet, right to the edges, place back into the "frame" in the laser being careful that it's in the same direction as when it was removed

- Apply transfer tape to protect the images but also keep the rectangle from moving around inside the frame

- Change the white outlines to black and cut them out

[Al Stewart]

Thank you, Joe! That's quite a process.

[Rodne Gold]

I have a large format printer with a Cutter head , vinyl cutting head. Its very possible to fit a laser cutter instead of a blade if you wanted to and had the time to develop it.
For certain , the flatbed UV type printers which have XY gantry type tables with flying heads could be easily fitted with a laser optic and a tube.
However its far easier to use a dedicated laser to do the cutting , they come with optical recognition that can read crop marks that are printed and align the cuts to these.
We already do that with our printer , I can print crop marks , print the graphic , send it to my laminator and overlaminate with a protective film , reload it into my printer/cutter , read the crop marks and then die cut to 0.2mm precision.

[Al Stewart]

Thanks, Rodne. My laser doesn't have optical recognition, but I can see where that would be the best answer. Just let the laser figure out where the marks are and go from there. I'm stuck trying to get the photograph and the substrate positioned under the laser path. I can get it pretty close but if it's not exact a sliver of background will be present at the edge of the sculpture or the end of the subject's nose gets cut flat. I have spent hours lining up the red dot to the print and very seldom have I got it close enough. It's far faster to cut the sculpture with a scroll saw.

[Rodne Gold]

Well , I also used to print on a cheap inkjet on polyester inkjet vinyl , bought from www.papilio.com and line it up on the laser and used to get very good precision when cutting , I used jigs for this but I can see how this wouldnt be practical for your sculptures etc.
What you could do for your application is use a sheet of very thin 1mm cheap see thru plastic material and make a small fixture that would always hold this in the same position on the laser , lets say 2 protruding removeable pins on the X and Y ruler - Shouldnt be an issue to install or remove the positioning pins on your ruler , cut holes in the oversize thin sheet that locate on the pins , not too tight as then you cant remove the template sheet , but not too loose so that it flops around
You put the sheet in position , just send the cut line to the laser at very high speed and low power , run it so that you can just make out the outline.
Remove the sheet , put your piece to be cut in the bed , put the sheet back and line up the lower image with the lasered outline , remove the thin sheet template and then send the cut at the correct speed and power and you should have an extremely accurate die cut thingy.
You can reuse the sheet many times until you can no longer make out the die lines lasered on it.
You can make finger sized holes in the top sheet to aid positioning of tge object to be cut out under it.
You can also minimise the misalignment by "bleeding" the image to the inside and outside of the die line (cut line) so you dont get white borders or the like.
Hope this helps ...

[Martin Boekers]

Al,

Here's a company out of St. Louis that has been making photo cut-outs for over twenty years. Not sure if they are using a laser now. I thought to post this as it may give some ideas.

http://www.seegerpeople.com/

Marty

[Al Stewart]

Rodne, this just may be the idea I've been looking for!I can see where the lines on the clear sheet would be MUCH easier to line up with than the red dot pointer, and much more accurate than some sort of jig. Thank you!

[Al Stewart]

Thanks, Martin. They have some cool designs there.

[Martin Boekers]

I've had call to do this on a few occasions, what I have done was take a scrap piece of mount board, vector cut the outline around it. (slightly smaller than the image) Then I would turn it over, position the image so it fit within the out line, tape it to the board. Then position in the same spot on the laser bed and cut.

This works ok, I used it to cut 20x20 printed military shields mounted to foam board for a last minute event. The organizer was doing it by hand with an exacto, didn't look good! The ones I did came out nice (for foam core) foam core doesn't cut great with a laser but they were fine for the usage.


Marty