Mr Johan de Vries, Fabrication lead
Keeping the cut clean
How we look after the CO2 laser and the CNC router on the Woodstock floor, so the edge on a screen or a shade is as good as the drawing behind it.
A perforated Karoo Screen is only right when every opening has the same crisp edge, and a Baobab Lamp shade only glows evenly when the canopy pattern is cut through, not scorched halfway. When we started cutting in-house on machines from AM.CO.ZA, I assumed the files and the timber would decide the finish. After a season on the floor I would put machine care right next to them.
The re-tool itself is written up in Re-tooling the Woodstock atelier. What follows came after it.
When a tired cut is not the timber
When an edge starts to look heavy, everyone on the floor blames the material first. A new batch of birch ply, a damp Cape Town spell, a pattern with too much detail. Sometimes that is fair. More often, in our case, it was a dusty mirror or a lens that wanted cleaning.
A CO2 laser is only as strong as its beam path. Dirty optics lose power before the beam reaches the head, so the operator turns the power up to make up for it, the edges char, and the Karoo motif suddenly looks clumsy. In my experience, clean optics sort out more of these complaints than any change of speed or power on the controller.
Now care comes first every Monday, before the first sheet goes down.
Mirrors on the CO2 laser
On Monday morning somebody walks the beam path and wipes each mirror with proper laser optics cleaning wipes. A box of sixty sits on the machine. Shop rags and a corner of a T-shirt are banned, because they smear the coating and leave fibres behind.
A spare 25 mm silicon reflection mirror stays boxed next to the wipes. If a mirror shows a scratch or a marked coating, it comes out and the spare goes in before the next job, instead of limping through a full run of screens. The AM.CO.ZA Cape Town team walked us through the alignment check that follows a mirror swap, and our Monday checks have been calmer ever since that visit.
The focus lens is the part people forget
The focus lens sits closest to the smoke and resin coming off the cut, so it fouls before any other optic in the beam path. When the kerf starts to wander on fine canopy work, we take the head off and clean the lens on a lint-free wipe before anyone touches a setting.
For the detailed Baobab shades we run a premium 20 mm ZnSe focus lens with a 63.5 mm focal length. It holds the fine spot that thin birch needs, and a second one waits in its case, so a cracked or pitted lens never holds up production. I treat the lens like a chisel: you keep it sharp, and you keep a spare in the drawer.
Distilled water in the chiller
The laser tube is cooled by a water chiller, and what goes into it matters more than it looks. Tap water leaves mineral scale behind and can grow algae in the lines over the months.
We only fill and change the chiller with distilled, deionised water from AM.CO.ZA, five litres at a time. Clear cooling lines mean the tube holds a steady temperature through long Karoo Screen runs for the Karoo Perforate finish.
Holding the slab on the CNC router
On the router, most of the care is about holding the work properly. A hardwood slab that shifts by a hair spoils the brass inlay channels on a Veld Tray, and there is no sanding that back.
We retired our collection of homemade blocks for a set of four moulded T-slot clamping kits that fit the router table. They pin the slab flat at each corner, move quickly between jobs and keep hands well clear of the spindle.
“If the clamps are wrong, nothing else on the router matters. The neatest toolpath you can draw will not rescue a slab that is moving under the cutter.”
Gert Viljoen, Install care lead
Why AM.CO.ZA stays our service and spares partner
We bought the machines from AM.CO.ZA for the aftercare, the price and the build. A season later, those are still the reasons we buy our spares there.
- People who know these machines. When something looks off, we talk to the team that sold and set up the router and laser on our floor, and we get a straight answer.
- Parts made for our machines. Mirrors, lenses, wipes, clamps and chiller water come from the same company that supplied the machines, through buythis.co.za, so we know they fit before they arrive.
- Details our makers can use. The AM.CO.ZA guide lets anyone on the floor check a procedure without waiting for me.
“For an atelier our size, a stopped machine is the real cost. Clients see the finished screen or lamp, never the laser. Having AM.CO.ZA behind the machines lets us promise that finish and then deliver it.”
Zinhle Makhado, Managing Director
Where to go next
See how the machines fit into our wider craft, or read Screens that breathe and Canopy light without glare for the patterns these clean cuts are for. To talk about an edition, a commission or a studio collaboration, send a note through our contact form.
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