Austen Sartain: Extra Credit--> Laser Cut Skateboard Raster

 Intent:

I wanted to create a design that takes advantage of a laser cutters ability to raster at different depths depending on the lasers power, speed, and the amount of space between lines.

Modeling:

The modeling was a very simple process that only used the polyline tool to create each shapes outline, and then the planarSrf functions to create the actual surfaces. After that, it was just a matter of layering them and coloring them.

The image depicts the sun shining over mountain peaks. The darker the color, the deeper the raster was burned into the skateboard.

Here, the layers are separated by the how burned they are, with the least at the top and the most at the bottom. There are several ways to produce this difference in raster depth. The laser cutter I use uses the program Inkscape to setup the laser cut. In the program, you can change the width between each pass the laser makes. The closer the darker and the farther away the lighter. You can also change the way the laser passes across. This means you can change it from going straight across, to up and down like a heartbeat monitor. This also affects the how much it burns the surface. The final two ways to edit the raster is changing the laser movement speed and the power level of the laser. Power level 100 is usually used to cut through materials, while levels around 50 to 30 are used to rastor. The reason being is that if you use 100% to rastor, your material will most likely start burning.