Week 1: 2D Modelling & Laser Cutting

For this week I worked with classmate Mariya on producing a self-standing structure from 2D models and the laser cutter. We used Rhino to create exact 2D curves to export to Adobe Illustrator, allowing us to laser cut out the shapes. The .ai file attached is the one we used for the final print.

Mariya and I went over ideas we could do on paper, and she took it a bit further making paper cutouts and some starter Rhino curves to demo. We had a little bit of trouble coming up with an idea that could become self-standing, but luckily at the time I was working on another project where I was having trouble with some gears, so I thought of this gear-like shape. We could then use simple rectangles to connect them.

Since this was my first time using Rhino the process was a bit slow, since I didn't know I could start shapes on endpoints/midpoints or use arrays to copy the cutouts. Instead I was using the XY coordinates and rotation to trim shapes out. My first copy was actually incorrectly measured since there was a bit of a mix-up between cm and mm measurements but was later corrected.

For our first test we printed 4 hexagons and 12 connectors. After assembling it we realized that if we wanted to connect them together we'd need varying lengths of the connectors so we went back and added them.

Since we wanted to save material, we decided to lower the connector from the original 12cm length. And for length variation we would create ones at 75% and 125% length. Unfortunately I was a bit rash with my math and did 75% of 12cm to get 9cm when I should have done 12cm/1.25 to get the actual new middle length of 9.6cm, so there are some edges that stick out from minor mismeasurements. Overall it does stand steadily and can be assembled in many ways and I like how it looks as a final product. In the future I'd probably add some extra variations in connector length so that we can make more interesting structures.