prototyping

A day when I get to use the laser cutter is always a good day!

Today I did test cuts of the TweenCurves and the component that will form the circular base for the mobile.

I was surprised that the scale of my test cut seemed to check out. I thought the base might be too big and the TweenCurves might be spaced too far apart, but I liked how the test looked. The only thing I ended up needing to tweak was making the size of the holes on the base smaller to match the size of the holes on the Tween Curves.–not sure how I missed that in my model.

So, I went ahead and cut out the TweenCurves from Masonite and painted them the same color as the brackets in the display.

Here they are drying on the floor of the spray booth in the Fabrication Lab.

The laser cutters closed before I was able to re-cut the mobile base with the correct sized holes, so I will have to return tomorrow to do that. Then, I’ll be able to assemble using the jump rings I bought today. Also, I   think I’ll need to create some sort of interior support structure for the base due to its size and the flimsiness of the paper.

In case you’re curious, here’s what the base looks like in Rhino (I’ve since changed the scale of this model). The version with the letters will be cut from white paper, and the version without the blue letters will be cut from blue paper. When layered on top of one another, it will give the effect of having blue letters. The layered papers can then be looped to form a circle.

I haven’t figured out yet what I want to do about the letters that have cut outs. I don’t really like the look of stencil lettering where you can see little tabs around the cut outs, so I might just save the cut out parts and glue them to the blue backing.