Laser-Cutting & Press Fit

 My original intention was to make a series of interconnecting colored hearts that could be assembled to make a rainbow. It was going to be for my daughter who's almost three, so it would need to be colorful and relatively simple.  I drew up a heart on CorelDraw and placed the slots at different angles, but unfortunately did not plan it well enough--the hearts came out great but constructing a standing rainbow from them wasn't quite possible.

    I cut stickers on the vinyl cutter for them to have color. The vinyl cutter was much more difficult to use than I expected. First, my CorelDraw file, made on the computer in my own lab, would not import. I then had to go back and save my file as a DXF and then it would import.  The main problem, however, was that the cutter seems to randomly pick an origin and so it was hard to tell whether my design would be “on the page” or not. Usually only part of the design got cut. Also, I don’t think I was cutting deep enough, because it was very hard to remove the hearts without stretching or tearing them. This will take much more practice.