Anya Yermakova

HOW TO MAKE (ALMOST) ANYTHING
MIT MEDIA LAB

LASER CUTTING - week2

Removable teeth
Having discussed my friend's father's profession of a dentist in the same day as Damien Hirst's expensive skulls, I thought it would be very cool to make removable teeth from some reflective material (paralleling diamonds) inserted into cardboard. First things first - I decided to research teeth and how they fit into a human mouth.

learning the physiology...

first paper cut out

the first Illustrator drawing after a live trace

The Cardboard

Having figured out the color map for different power settings to bend the "wings" of the teeth, here are the first attempts at cutting out the pieces:

Problems

The cardboard in the laser cutter tended to bend slightly, making the cutting depth inconsistent. Also the jaw wouldn't balance on it's own, so I made a couple of "stands." I played with different sizes of the wheel, and with various distances between slits on the wheel, to make sure the slits don't collapse.

To allow for some curvature in the jaw, I made evenly spaced low-power cuts to just perforate the first layer of the cardboard. Both overbite and underbite models achieved, with just turning around the wheel!

...I didn't get to the diamond part, but hopefully next time we'll have diamond-coated material for vinyl cutters ;)