Jonathan Holt Week 11: FlatFab Laser Cut

Dino

Concept: I found a tutorial on how to create the dinosaur model. I chose this one because dinosaurs are awesome!

Dino cutout

Process: I went through rhino after creating the design in flatfab and fixed up the slots. I then put it in Illustrator and sent it to my buddy who owns a laser cutter.

Keyshot 1

Keyshot 2

Material: We used .06 thick cardboard and glue to create our designs, but I thought about using a clear acrylic next time to give it a fancier look.

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

Andrew Rowan: Week 10 Laser Cutting

Rhino ghosted image

Rhino layered image

Concept: My original inspiration for this piece was a crown conch shell. I thought the shape would work well with slicing and it was very dynamic. I wanted to transform a slice of the upper part of the shell and it's protrusions into the flatter, smaller sections, that are present on the lower portion of the shell. I initially only made the sections flatter, but I realized I could also activate the vertical axis if I made them smaller as well. To add another dynamic I decided to exaggerate this transformation by pushing it all the way to rectilinear shapes, with the main rectilinear slice being opposite the crown conch slice. I wanted this sculpture to be in the round so that people could see all the transitions and how each piece flows into the next.

Rhino laser cut file 1

Rhino laser cut file 2

Technique: In FlatFab I first formed my base circle. I then input the abstract slice of the crown conch shell on the circle. On the opposite side I drew the exaggerated rectilinear shape. I then drew the two intermediary transitions that activate the vertical axis. I then used a blend between adjacent sections. Due to the concave nature of the shapes I had a lot of issues with the shapes being only an outline. I was able to resolve by flipping the curve handles on nodes within the shape. Generally only one node per shape had a "normal flip." After a lot of experimentation with this I was able to pin point the problem node in each shape that had this issue. One of the more extreme shapes required two nodes to be flipped. After this I exported the file as a DXF, used Illustrator as a pass through for an obj file, and finally opened it in Rhino. In Rhino I exploded everything and created the layers. I then assigned everything to the proper layer and forced all lines to the correct color. Finally I laid out all the pieces in the most efficient way I could and sent the files to the machine shop to be cut.

Close up render

Gallery render

Materials: For my materials I decided that the round sectional makeup worked really nicely with the two tone cardboard. I used polished metal for one side of each section as well as the section width. I used chrome on the outer edge to highlight the contours of each piece which helps to show the transition from section to section. I used blue textured metal for the remaining side of each section. I used a blue that was not too bright so as to not take away from the polished metal while still adding emphasis to the contours of the shape. For the retaining ring I used gloss orange paint as a complimentary color to the blue. This helped to activate the horizontal axis and adds another layer of visual interest. I also did not want to hide the construction of this piece. This is because it is, as a whole, very dynamic, but the construction itself is very simple. This will also be more prominent once I add two more smaller rings for stability.

Public display render

Ashley D Goodenough: Study Slots

Concept: My laser cutting study slots are made up of six designs that are all organic in contrasting ways. I chose to design three types of bone: a vertebra, a femur, and a pelvis. I also chose to design three other things from nature that are less animal and more mineral and/or flora: a diatom, a grapefruit slice, and a leaf. I intended to get different functions out of different shapes. For example, the femurs would be lengthy, structural, and weight-bearing. The diatoms would be able to string together to make up continuous lines. The grapefruit slices would act like joints. The pelvis would be a splitter, where I needed to insert a "fork in the road." I wanted an interesting array of organic objects so that I could use them to construct body parts or animal-like structures from the pieces, Frankenstein-esque. I ended up creating an arm, a pair of legs, and an abstract spinal form that was inspired by snake skeletons.

Modeling:  I used interpolate points curves, conics, Join, CurveBoolean, Array, Move, BoundingBox, and Analyze:Length to build my inner and outer cut shapes for my study slots. I was originally planning on doing three whole 24x48 birch wood panels of these, so that I would have a lot of bones to work with and potentially build something quite large, but I didn’t want to take up too much laser cutting machine time from other people. My layout is a bit unorthodox because I intended to do two designs per wood panel back when I was planning on completing three whole panels. This snapshot is after compromising and placing a more reasonable amount of each design on a single panel. The empty corner in the upper left is where I did a test to see how I felt about the sizing of each slot and the tightness of the slot fit, both of which turned out to be too large and needed to be scaled down.

Materials: I used a .19” thick panel of birch wood that had some interesting color variation on one side. This worked out really well, especially after finishing the slots with a single layer of polyurethane, because the wood grain looks pretty dramatic on one side combined with the smoke patterns created by the laser. I think it would be interesting to continue this project on a different type of wood using the same slot designs, and use both types of wood in a single structure.

abstract spinal form: made up of diatoms and vertebrae study slots

arm (fingers to neck): made up of femurs, grapefruit slices, vertebrae, leaves, and one pelvis

pair of legs: made up of femurs, a pelvis, grapefruit slices, and leaves

This is a new composition made up of only the diatom slots. I kept going until the structure filled itself out and all the curves were complete. It's basically the final form that the slots wanted to take. It looks different from just about every angle! The following three photos are all the same build.






Bonus: two final forms combined! The shadows these make are really beautiful.

Tanner Mortenson Week 10: Waffle Modeling

For Week 10, we continued our exploration of laser cutting and began designing with a waffle structure. Based off of an ocean wave, I decided to create a unique form, and continued to experiment with Rhino.  I used curves, solid shapes such as spheres, to add as well as subtract from the overall shape of the model to provide a unique flow to the project.

Rhino model screenshots:

Keyshot renders:

Mary Effler: Polyhedra Project

I used to love making little paper craft toys as a kid, and for a while at work lately, my coworkers and I would print out a lot from http://www.papercraftmuseum.com/ and put them up around work. So this project was pretty fun for me to do. I started out with the low pentagrammic pyramid model: 

I had originally made some designs on it after moving it into Illustrator and prepping it for laser printing, but since the engraving layers and the like aren't being printed right now, those didnt make it to the final model:

I put together the printed form with Loctite, after using my little multitool knife to make some of the folds and perforations easier to fold:  

Since I didn't have the added in cut outs and the like, I was wondering how best to go about decorating it before Monday. As I mentioned in my drum model though, I really like the idea of art where other people are encouraged to pick it up and mess with it, rather than just observing it. So I took it to a coffee shop I frequent near my house, called Cafe Bohemia. The owner is an artist herself, and loves leaving various art supplies around for people to play with. They first took some spray paint to it, where we just left it for a day next to a bunch of paint and told people to go nuts. Then we left it next to a black sharpie, and 10 people decorated a side. Here's the finished result: