Making a Doom Set, Part 1

Post date: Jul 22, 2011 3:14:38 AM

Here is a start to finish look at making a Doom Set. You may click on any picture to see a larger view.

Above is the laser cutter setup. Its a bit cluttered but gets the job done. Like the wooden blocks holding it up? The orange bucket is full of water that is circulated through the laser-tube to keep it cool. The silver hose is connected to a fan to extract the fumes when cutting plastic. There is also a fire extinguisher at the bottom in easy reach. You can't be too safe when dealing with lasers.

Here are the raw materials. Several sheet of 1/8" thick acrylic plastic. For the Doom Set, we use yellow and dark gray. The acrylic comes with a protective paper sheet on both sides to prevent scratches and getting dirty. Generally, we leave the paper on when cutting, unless the piece requires engraving.

Here is the laser cutting out some of the yellow pieces for the Doom Set. The laser tube is behind the back wall of the cutter and uses mirrors to direct the beam onto the plastic. The final mirror and lens head can move in both the X and Y dimensions to cut out any 2-dimensional shape. The small clear tube near the lens is an air assist to push any smoke and particles away from the lens to keep it clean and so it can cut consistently.

These pictures were shot through the protective red glass that blocks the laser. This is a safety measure to make sure the laser beam is always contained within the enclosure of the cutter. The laser beam is infrared and is blocked by glass. Since the infrared beam is invisible you have to be very careful.

There is a fail safe mechanism in that if the lid of the cutter is opened, the power to the laser tube is cut off. There is also a big red shut-off switch if anything goes wrong.

Here is the sheet of yellow pieces done cutting.

Here are all the pieces extracted from the sheet with the protective paper removed from one side.

After cutting a bunch more yellow and gray sheets we have all the pieces needed for making the Doom Set. In part two, we'll show how all the pieces come together. You could say that our work is cut out for us!

The build is concluded in Making a Doom Set, Part 2!