Charlie Chang Week 9-11: Laser Cutting

Concept

I wanted to make an animalistic sculpture for this project. I felt inspired by curved shapes, without many hard edges. Birds were the main animal I was trying to emulate in my design, but I also felt like manatees crept into the finished look of the piece. 

FlatFab design

FlatFab design

Techniques

The process for this laser cutting project started in FlatFab, where I began by making random shapes, and found that a large planar shape I had created resembled a bird. I then created crests along the back, like a spine, and a large tail feather/ fin shape towards the end. I created two planks to hold up the main structure. I also went back and copied a second main plane, to create depth.

Next, I went into Illustrator and converted it to a flat sliced document, which I then transferred to Rhino. In Rhino, I sliced all the points that were crude and not near the edges. I would later find out that as I was grouping my shapes and sizing them on the template, that I missed two of the slices. This would later cause an issue with the actual sculpture. Then I put my information on it and sent it to the laser cutter. 

Layered View

Layered View 2

Rhino Flat

Materials

Keyshot View

Keyshot View 2

For the Keyshot render, I chose to make my model out of different glass materials. I liked the transparency of the material, and felt that it added a sophisticated look to such a strange sculpture.

I chose to use the Red, Yellow, and Orange Solid Glass materials from Keyshot. When choosing backgrounds, I went with a desert road, because I felt it had the look I wanted when looking through the sculpture. The other environments detracted from the piece, but with the tree in the far back of the desert road, the model wad the focus. I obviously do not think that a real  version of my sculpture would be placed in a desert, but for the sake of showing it off with the limited environment options Keyshot had, I figured deserts would show the translucency of the model off well.

Finished Product