Julio Romero: Slots

I wanted to make my slots versatile so that I could use them in multiple ways. Part of that would be making them long and thin to have good surface area without making the pieces bulky, and another part would be to have many slots at different angles so that I could attach them from multiple angles. I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted to make, so I wanted to just connect the parts together and see what it made.

I began with a small rectangle which I used to create 2 center lines; I offset the longer one in both directions to create the main body of my modular piece, and the other was only used for mirroring purposes. I added a small circle in the center of the rectangle as well as a larger one on one end of the rectangle. I copied the larger circle and then scaled it down to make a hole. I made a tiny rectangle a little less than 3/16ths of an inch wide because of the thickness of the wood I was using, copy and rotated it around the center of the larger circle, and then mirrored all of it over to the other side. I then booleaned the curves into the shape I wanted and then used linear array to make 24 copies.

When I was connecting the pieces together it began to look like a tank, so I decided to go along with that design; some pieces that I added didn't really connect to anything important, but I added to make the model appear bulkier. When I first got my file laser cut I was originally going to use 1/4 inch cardboard, but I decided to use a piece of wood I already had, so afterwards the slots weren't the correct size and I couldn't fit them together. Instead of just throwing those pieces out, however, I decided to find some use for them. They looked a little like bones or limbs, so I thought I'd try to make a puppet. To allow the limbs to move, I made a "sandwhich" with 3 different pieces: I glued a small circle that was cut out of the holes of my first attempt to a larger circle that was cut out of my second attempt, placed it inside one of the holes, and then glued the other side to a module piece.