Chloe Ferris: Week 6 Slots

For this project, I wanted to create an abstract sculpture out of the laser cut pieces to display in my apartment. I was very inspired by the idea of water and the flow of waves, so I focused my idea around that. I looked at many references of other's slot projects, along with sculptures of water, in order to solidify my idea. I created three different curved pieces, to show three different stages of a wave flowing, along with two smaller, simple curve pieces to act as connectors. I wanted the connectors to be more geometric and without cutout pieces, in order to provide a contrast to the waves and not draw attention from them.

Reference 1 - Stallman Studio

Reference 2 - Stephen Kishel

Reference 3 - Lubo

I created the pieces completely in Rhino, using curves. I used the 3-point curve tool to create the different wavey shapes, then placed the notches at different angles and combined them together to make one curve with the CurveBoolean tool. For the connectors, I used the arc tool to make two arcs (inside and outside), then connected the bottoms with a line. Then, I added notches, CurveBoolean'd them together, and filleted the bottom edges to keep with the curved design. I did not want any hard edges besides where the notches would be.

The Root Piece, and the Modified Designs

The 48 x 24 Layout

I had these laser cut on 2-ply cardboard, because I wanted the pieces to be a little thicker. When I brought in the file to the lab tech, he suggest I delete a couple of the pieces in order to keep the time down, so I cut out about 6 pieces from the original file. The whole cutting process took 15 minutes, but about half of the pieces had to be cut again with a razor blade, because the laser had not gone all the way through the board on one end (the lab tech said the bed on that side got too cold). I then took the pieces, arranged them how I wanted, and glued them together with Loctite glue. I did not use all of the pieces I cut, but I think it looks better that way.

Final Composition 1

Final Composition 2

Here is a breakdown of how my time was spent on this project:
Week 6: Idea formation, planning, creating forms in Rhino
Week 7: Finalizing forms, laser cutting, and physical assembly