Brian Uretsky - Laser Cut Slots

Laser Cut Slots

Introducing Laser Cutting!
Laser cutting is something I had an interest in many years ago before 3D printing was available. I remember being in high school and cutting things out of acrylic plastic. I haven't touch laser cutting in a long time.
The basic concept hadn't changed since I last designed used this design technique so it was very straight forward putting these together. I used the guide online to show me exactly what we were to create and how to color code them.

To get an idea of how to make these slot desigs, I decided to practice making them by using the guide as a reference. I chose to use a single cardboard with a thickness of 0.12 inches for my template.

The primary inspiration behind my design was, like my flashlight sleeve, based on Star Trek. The inspiration comes from the series Star Trek Voyager where the Vulcan tabletop game Kal-Toh is introduced. The game focuses on hundreds of small slots that must be organized to create a symmetric object.

Screenshot from Star Trek Voyager

To make sure these slot pieces would fit together properly, I designed three different slots that are used to join larger peices together at different angles.

This is a slightly smaller version of the slot above.

This is a four way combination slot used to join pieces.

It was very interesting to see the CurveBoolean tool at work. I didn't realize how easy it made everything.

My goal is to use these slots to create some kind of self-sustaining desktop model. It is really hard to tell what the end result will become so I tried to fit as many peices as possible into the space allocated.

The screenshot below shows how the slots are arranged on the 24x48 cardboard sheet.
The different colors determine what the laser will do. The blue lines are interiors cuts and are to be cut first. The magenta lines are exterior cuts that define the shape of the slot. The cyan lines are purely guidelines for the design and will be ignored by the laser cutter.

Using these slots, I can try to create a symmetric design out of chaotic parts.

Here are my slots successfully cut out on 1-ply cardboard.

I also recieved an unintentional gift:

These are pieces that are discarded by the laser cutter when cutting shapes in the cardboard. I've decided to use them in my model in some way.

Going with the general theme of Kal-Toh, I started building my project with a base and building up and outwards.

The overall shape of the project using the main slot cutouts are completely symmetrical. I used the extra cutout pieces to complete the gaps in the pattern and to create a sense of asymmetry. This is my attmept to demonstrate order within chaos.

When building the project, I encountered some difficulty assembling the parts. The thickness of the cardboard was probably closer to 0.13 than 0.12. I had to pinch each end and force them together. I suppose this is better than having the slots too thick so the parts didn't fit at all.

I also never anticipated using the small extra cutout pieces. I would have put slots on them, but I think the lack of slots let me use them more creatively.

I would have used more peices to cover the entire project, but I unfortuantely ran out.

If I were to make any changes, I would design my slots to be 0.13 or 0.14 and scale them down slightly so that I could fit more slots on the 24x48 board.