The Art of Creating a Multi-Layered Laser Cut: A Step-by-Step Guide

As I embarked on this project, I must admit that I was a bit nervous about the outcome. The goal was to create a multi-layered laser cut with intricate designs and precision cuts, and I wasn't sure if it would be possible. But as I began to work on the design and select the materials, my confidence grew, and I became excited to share this process with you.

Accidentally Cutting the Back Piece

One of the challenges I faced was cutting out a solid back piece for the project. I had intended to use a pre-made template, but in my haste, I accidentally cut it the wrong way. However, rather than panicking, I decided to press on and make the most of the situation. After measuring the dimensions, I carefully fitted the back piece into place, creating a small gap between the top and bottom layers.

Adapting to a Seven-Layer Glue-Up

To accommodate the accidental cut, I opted for a seven-layer glue-up instead of the originally planned eight layers. This adjustment required some creative problem-solving, but ultimately resulted in a beautiful and intricate design. By carefully planning each layer and using a combination of adhesives and accelerators, I was able to achieve the desired effect.

The Role of CA Glue and Accelerator

One of the key components in achieving this multi-layered laser cut is the use of CA glue and an accelerator. The CA glue provides the necessary bonding strength and precision, while the accelerator speeds up the drying time, allowing for more flexibility in the design process. I used a medium-density CA glue from Starbon, which proved to be reliable and effective.

The Trick to Working with CA Glue

To work efficiently with CA glue, it's essential to use the right technique. In my case, I applied the glue to the first piece before placing the second layer on top. Once the two pieces were aligned, I sprayed the CA glue into the corners, creating a small pool of liquid adhesive. By setting weight on top of the glue, I ensured that it would set properly and hold the layers in place.

Adding a Clear Gloss Lacquer Finish

After completing the multi-layered laser cut, I applied a clear gloss lacquer finish to protect the design and enhance its appearance. This added an extra layer of sophistication and shine to the overall piece, making it truly special.

Tips and Tricks for Aspiring Laser Cutters

Throughout this project, I've learned that with patience, creativity, and practice, anyone can create beautiful and intricate laser cuts. Here are a few tips and tricks to keep in mind:

* Always double-check your measurements before cutting out the materials.

* Use the right adhesive and accelerator combination for your specific project needs.

* Experiment with different techniques and designs until you find what works best for you.

* Don't be afraid to adapt to unexpected challenges – they can often lead to new and exciting opportunities.

Conclusion

Creating a multi-layered laser cut is an art form that requires patience, creativity, and attention to detail. By following these steps and tips, you can achieve stunning results and push the boundaries of what's possible with laser cutting. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting out, I hope this guide has inspired you to try your hand at multi-layered laser cuts and experience the thrill of creating something truly unique and beautiful.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys I'm Nick and this is Bild dad build a place where we believe that absence makes the hearts grow funder what kind of horse puy is that the only way to a man's heart is Budweiser tall boys well apparently you have met my new shop assistant red I'm sorry today is kind of a viewer request video um I'd made this off camera and somebody asked me to make a video uh showing how I made it so we're going to make another one today um this is just a a layered art project or a layered uh laser cut project this is eight layers of uh 3mm material and it just has kind of that cool 3d effect um I went ahead and added some color into this one and I was asked if I could show how to make it so we're going to do that today now I picked up this file on designc concepts. net there's plenty of places where you can pick up these files I did pay for that I would suggest going and checking out Rich's website Louisiana hobby guys website Rich's website is engrave andcut files.com he has a he has a bunch of different kinds of files in there uh he has a lot of free stuff in there uh the paid stuff if you're a patron you actually get an additional discount off the paid stuff uh but just a ton of stuff and it's everything he's he's made all of these himself so definitely go check it out um go check out his channel he's the he's the light bur Guru and now that I've sufficiently kissed his ass let's get to work I will link to this file down below it is a couple of bucks and today the material we're going to be using is uh I'll be using some 3mm wallnut and some 3mm Baltic Birch ply because that's what I have on hand um you can do this with just about anything always it usually helps to have two different colors so you kind of have the contrast in there but we are going to paint some of the middle layers too to kind of have this red and the pink pop a little bit so basically you download the file and it will give you eight pieces so we're going to cut out each one of those pieces individually uh and then we'll get to assemblage um after that's done fair warning this thing is about eight this one that I made is like 8 in tall and this video will probably spend like a day or two just to cut out the pieces I should have guessed that if you started first thing in the morning you could probably get these all cut out in the same day but it's like it's like noon already um and the kids get out of school early so I'm really doubting that are going to be using the xtool D1 to cut this this is the 10 watt variety or flavor if you will um this is going to cut a little faster than the 5 watt but you can do this on a 5 wat laser as well if you're interested in this unit I will leave a link to it down below below uh along with my uh promo code which will get you 8% off and when you're looking into the lasers 8% is is a nice little bonus to have off of the price all right let's get to it I had quite a few of you guys ask me about this uh spoil bar that I use when I cut uh basically this is just a perforated piece of metal and then these are like the little spiky things that back in the 80s used to be on the gloves and the you know leather jackets and stuff like that and they just screw in the back um I picked all this stuff up off of Amazon uh I'll put the links to the stuff in the description as well uh this is kind of a really cheap way to come up with a honeycomb I do have a honeycomb on the way for the xtool but Honeycombs are fairly expensive so this is kind of a cheaper version to kind of get the same result basically you want to have a little breathing room underneath whatever you're cutting so you don't burn the backside and it's going to let it breathe a little bit better too say I'm feeling a little wack today dare I say I feel a little a little zany if you will all right so the First Cut is going to be the very back piece which is just a heart shape so I think this will be the quickest one to cut I am using laser box Basics a proprietary software for the X tool to do this this project doesn't require any like Advanced tools so it's just a little bit easier to do it into here we're going at 100% power uh 3 mm/ second so what is that like 180 mm per minute and a away he we go it is the next day it is significantly colder today we had a little little little cold patch com to Houston uh so I'm cold man cold always one where you're like okay man I got all the stuff and then you and then you realize that you didn't get that one little nibblet all right nibblet abolished abolished I think yesterday I made it sound like these things were going to take forever to cut the front and the back so like this cut and this cut don't take hardly any time the back doesn't take hardly any time cuz it's just the heart shape so the ones in the middle like these guys uh end up being about 30 minutes a piece so so next we're going to focus on these two layers these are layers four and five right in the middle and what we're going to do is we're going to paint this one pink and this one red we want to paint this one pink this one they go like this uh we're going to paint this one pink so the red is really going to pop on top of it I love the smell of burnt wood just love it not ideal spray painting weather but we do with what we got to do right all right let's get after it just when I have laying around the shop um yeah I don't know why I have pink laying around the shop but if you don't want to use pink you can use white um that'll make this pop as well and then I this is just a matte fire red honestly it's just what I have laying around you could do gloss or whatever um not a big deal I think this is gloss actually yeah so the candy pink is gloss used to call me pinky maloon back in the day now is kind of the hurry up and wait portion of this because because gluing these things together just takes time um but just to recap okay I accidentally cut the back piece which is just a solid piece um when I when I smooshed it down to 200 mm I didn't l link it so it was it was still the same width and it didn't fit um I was going to cut another one but I mean honestly this is the back piece behind that so I think it'll be fine to just have these little holes in there so we're just going to go with a seven layer glue up um the file does have eight eight layers so we're going to go like this basically one two pink is three pink is still a little wet because it's cold here four is red and then five these the files are number too I'm not like I'm also getting paint on everything apparently uh six and then seven so our glue up is going to look like this when it's finished let's set that in front of the heater on the floor while we glue these two first pieces up um and now I'm going to teach you the trick that is going to make your life a whole lot easier when you do this I will be using CA glue this is by starbon this is just a medium density uh CA glue clear basically clear super glue and I will be using this accelerator from a starbon as well basically what this does is it speeds up the the drying time of the CA glue which is already pretty quick right now first things first I've been an affiliate with starbon forever I'll put the link down below if you're doing any sort of laser cutting you should have CA glue in the shop and if you're going to have have Seagle in the shop you might as well use my discount code and uh get it for cheaper check out that link and save yourself some money now having said that we're going to use the accelerator we're going to use it a little differently than you normally do because you do want to have the working time to make sure that you get your two pieces together and lined up so what I do as kind of a cheat is I put the CA glue on the first piece I'm going to place the second piece on top and once I get the two pieces lined up I I spray the CA glue and try to get it just kind of in the corners here and then I'm going to set weight on top of it and hopefully between the two of those it'll set up finish this off I'm just using a little clear gloss lacquer uh this just what I had um I would suggest using a spray it's just easier to get into all the nooks and crannies with a rattle can so we've got a couple coats of clear gloss lacquer on the heart now uh before we take a look at it I just want to say thanks to you guys for sticking around to the end of the video If you like this video hit that like button if you have not subscribed to the channel yet please consider subscribing it helps me out more than you guys know and it costs you nothing and as always an extra special Thanks goes to all of my Patron members this channel would not be where it is without you especially my top tier or boiler maker patrons Steven man Eric Weiss Chuck fauler Derek coats puffy muffins Jim Carter Andy the Viking Dwight Smith and Christopher Walters kinkies want strawberries you want blueberries yeah I don't think I have any blueberries bu I want strawberries you want strawberries you want strawberries if I don't have blueberries buddy yes okay can you tell me what you're doing we want to play we're playing you're playing I use this FL since a have FL yes yay I can all right right let's check her out check that out I think the that red and pink just gives it that extra bit of funkiness if you will of of being funky and I obviously uh don't have a good way to hang this yet so let's try to get some shots you guys get the idea though guys I hope you get to see how easy it is to make one of these it's really not that difficult it's a little bit more laser intensive than anything else okay so I hope you guys got a little inspiration out of this project maybe you want to do something for Valentine's Day or maybe now you just want to try your hand at a multi-layered laser cut and I hope you see that it's just it's not nearly as intimidating as people think it is that being said I don't want to waste any more of your time so until next time thanks for playing now I got to get to work woohoo we link to video Jesus Nick talk who that is a red one I really got to stop doing that voice got to get to work on this bourbon where's the bourbon remember that what movie is that from comments down belowwhat's up guys I'm Nick and this is Bild dad build a place where we believe that absence makes the hearts grow funder what kind of horse puy is that the only way to a man's heart is Budweiser tall boys well apparently you have met my new shop assistant red I'm sorry today is kind of a viewer request video um I'd made this off camera and somebody asked me to make a video uh showing how I made it so we're going to make another one today um this is just a a layered art project or a layered uh laser cut project this is eight layers of uh 3mm material and it just has kind of that cool 3d effect um I went ahead and added some color into this one and I was asked if I could show how to make it so we're going to do that today now I picked up this file on designc concepts. net there's plenty of places where you can pick up these files I did pay for that I would suggest going and checking out Rich's website Louisiana hobby guys website Rich's website is engrave andcut files.com he has a he has a bunch of different kinds of files in there uh he has a lot of free stuff in there uh the paid stuff if you're a patron you actually get an additional discount off the paid stuff uh but just a ton of stuff and it's everything he's he's made all of these himself so definitely go check it out um go check out his channel he's the he's the light bur Guru and now that I've sufficiently kissed his ass let's get to work I will link to this file down below it is a couple of bucks and today the material we're going to be using is uh I'll be using some 3mm wallnut and some 3mm Baltic Birch ply because that's what I have on hand um you can do this with just about anything always it usually helps to have two different colors so you kind of have the contrast in there but we are going to paint some of the middle layers too to kind of have this red and the pink pop a little bit so basically you download the file and it will give you eight pieces so we're going to cut out each one of those pieces individually uh and then we'll get to assemblage um after that's done fair warning this thing is about eight this one that I made is like 8 in tall and this video will probably spend like a day or two just to cut out the pieces I should have guessed that if you started first thing in the morning you could probably get these all cut out in the same day but it's like it's like noon already um and the kids get out of school early so I'm really doubting that are going to be using the xtool D1 to cut this this is the 10 watt variety or flavor if you will um this is going to cut a little faster than the 5 watt but you can do this on a 5 wat laser as well if you're interested in this unit I will leave a link to it down below below uh along with my uh promo code which will get you 8% off and when you're looking into the lasers 8% is is a nice little bonus to have off of the price all right let's get to it I had quite a few of you guys ask me about this uh spoil bar that I use when I cut uh basically this is just a perforated piece of metal and then these are like the little spiky things that back in the 80s used to be on the gloves and the you know leather jackets and stuff like that and they just screw in the back um I picked all this stuff up off of Amazon uh I'll put the links to the stuff in the description as well uh this is kind of a really cheap way to come up with a honeycomb I do have a honeycomb on the way for the xtool but Honeycombs are fairly expensive so this is kind of a cheaper version to kind of get the same result basically you want to have a little breathing room underneath whatever you're cutting so you don't burn the backside and it's going to let it breathe a little bit better too say I'm feeling a little wack today dare I say I feel a little a little zany if you will all right so the First Cut is going to be the very back piece which is just a heart shape so I think this will be the quickest one to cut I am using laser box Basics a proprietary software for the X tool to do this this project doesn't require any like Advanced tools so it's just a little bit easier to do it into here we're going at 100% power uh 3 mm/ second so what is that like 180 mm per minute and a away he we go it is the next day it is significantly colder today we had a little little little cold patch com to Houston uh so I'm cold man cold always one where you're like okay man I got all the stuff and then you and then you realize that you didn't get that one little nibblet all right nibblet abolished abolished I think yesterday I made it sound like these things were going to take forever to cut the front and the back so like this cut and this cut don't take hardly any time the back doesn't take hardly any time cuz it's just the heart shape so the ones in the middle like these guys uh end up being about 30 minutes a piece so so next we're going to focus on these two layers these are layers four and five right in the middle and what we're going to do is we're going to paint this one pink and this one red we want to paint this one pink this one they go like this uh we're going to paint this one pink so the red is really going to pop on top of it I love the smell of burnt wood just love it not ideal spray painting weather but we do with what we got to do right all right let's get after it just when I have laying around the shop um yeah I don't know why I have pink laying around the shop but if you don't want to use pink you can use white um that'll make this pop as well and then I this is just a matte fire red honestly it's just what I have laying around you could do gloss or whatever um not a big deal I think this is gloss actually yeah so the candy pink is gloss used to call me pinky maloon back in the day now is kind of the hurry up and wait portion of this because because gluing these things together just takes time um but just to recap okay I accidentally cut the back piece which is just a solid piece um when I when I smooshed it down to 200 mm I didn't l link it so it was it was still the same width and it didn't fit um I was going to cut another one but I mean honestly this is the back piece behind that so I think it'll be fine to just have these little holes in there so we're just going to go with a seven layer glue up um the file does have eight eight layers so we're going to go like this basically one two pink is three pink is still a little wet because it's cold here four is red and then five these the files are number too I'm not like I'm also getting paint on everything apparently uh six and then seven so our glue up is going to look like this when it's finished let's set that in front of the heater on the floor while we glue these two first pieces up um and now I'm going to teach you the trick that is going to make your life a whole lot easier when you do this I will be using CA glue this is by starbon this is just a medium density uh CA glue clear basically clear super glue and I will be using this accelerator from a starbon as well basically what this does is it speeds up the the drying time of the CA glue which is already pretty quick right now first things first I've been an affiliate with starbon forever I'll put the link down below if you're doing any sort of laser cutting you should have CA glue in the shop and if you're going to have have Seagle in the shop you might as well use my discount code and uh get it for cheaper check out that link and save yourself some money now having said that we're going to use the accelerator we're going to use it a little differently than you normally do because you do want to have the working time to make sure that you get your two pieces together and lined up so what I do as kind of a cheat is I put the CA glue on the first piece I'm going to place the second piece on top and once I get the two pieces lined up I I spray the CA glue and try to get it just kind of in the corners here and then I'm going to set weight on top of it and hopefully between the two of those it'll set up finish this off I'm just using a little clear gloss lacquer uh this just what I had um I would suggest using a spray it's just easier to get into all the nooks and crannies with a rattle can so we've got a couple coats of clear gloss lacquer on the heart now uh before we take a look at it I just want to say thanks to you guys for sticking around to the end of the video If you like this video hit that like button if you have not subscribed to the channel yet please consider subscribing it helps me out more than you guys know and it costs you nothing and as always an extra special Thanks goes to all of my Patron members this channel would not be where it is without you especially my top tier or boiler maker patrons Steven man Eric Weiss Chuck fauler Derek coats puffy muffins Jim Carter Andy the Viking Dwight Smith and Christopher Walters kinkies want strawberries you want blueberries yeah I don't think I have any blueberries bu I want strawberries you want strawberries you want strawberries if I don't have blueberries buddy yes okay can you tell me what you're doing we want to play we're playing you're playing I use this FL since a have FL yes yay I can all right right let's check her out check that out I think the that red and pink just gives it that extra bit of funkiness if you will of of being funky and I obviously uh don't have a good way to hang this yet so let's try to get some shots you guys get the idea though guys I hope you get to see how easy it is to make one of these it's really not that difficult it's a little bit more laser intensive than anything else okay so I hope you guys got a little inspiration out of this project maybe you want to do something for Valentine's Day or maybe now you just want to try your hand at a multi-layered laser cut and I hope you see that it's just it's not nearly as intimidating as people think it is that being said I don't want to waste any more of your time so until next time thanks for playing now I got to get to work woohoo we link to video Jesus Nick talk who that is a red one I really got to stop doing that voice got to get to work on this bourbon where's the bourbon remember that what movie is that from comments down below\n"