Water Chiller

It’s the white box to the left of the laser cutter. You can tell that it’s on because the green light will be on. Don’t worry about the temperature just yet.

Fume Extractor

Big Red uses a large air extractor that is connected to the back of the machine. Fumes are pulled out of the machine through slots located inside the cutting bay behind the bed. Put your hand over these slots and check for slight air movement.

Movement

• Press esc to exit the menu
• Use the arrow keys to move the head around
• Press the Emergency Stop

Height check

Because Big Red’s bed can move up and down it’s possible for the bed to be raised to a point where your material will not fit. To lower the bed press the Z button to switch into vertical mode and use the down arrow. To exit vertical mode press the Z button again.

Square your material

The bed itself is free to slide around and cannot be relied upon to be square. The only horizontal squared surface is the gantry. (The bar that the laser head moves left and right on)

Engraving space

To ensure consistent engraves Big Red adds speed up/slow down buffers on each side. Unfortunately it does not take this buffer into account when determining whether your job will fit. To account for this make sure that there is at least a 5cm gap between your engrave and the edge of the bed on the horizontal axis. Don’t worry, the laser isn’t firing during the buffer space.

Check design size

The test button will use the head to trace a rectangular bounding box. You can use this bounding box to estimate whether your design will fit. The only consequence of your design not fitting is the completeness of your final piece, the laser can safely be directed at the laser bed without issue.

Soft material

If your material is soft (like foam, leather, fabric, toast etc) find a piece of hard material (wood/acrylic/metal) that is similar in thickness to your material and perform the following steps on the hard material instead. Once the laser is focused you can swap back to your intended material.

Probe position

Ensure that the Z probe (the stick on the left hand side of the cutting head) is over the centre of your desired cutting area. Failure to position the probe directly over your material during this step has a high likelihood of damaging the machine.

Probing

• Switch the laser into Z/vertical mode by pressing the Z button
• Place your hand over the emergency stop
• Press the datum button

When things go wrong

Unlike almost every other part of laser cutting this is the one step where mistakes have a high likelihood of damaging the machine. If the probe is caught in the bed you cannot fix the problem yourself. Instead contact:

• Maintainers in the space
• #lasers on Slack
• Blake

Until you turn the machine back on it’s an easy fix for maintainers.

• Spray bottle
• Remove the material

• Fire Blanket
• Fire Extinguisher