In this part I used the vinyl cutter to print an image of the zebrafish larvae. The original image was in .png with many details, and it took a number of trials to get to the right settings. First was the force and the speed on the cutter, I had to increase the force to 75g instead of 50g, in addition to reducing the speed. Moreover, during removal of the adhesive paper extra steps was need to make sure that the cutted pieces detach appropriately
The initial idea was to make a spiral staircase from the cardboard. I designed four pieces, two were intended for creating the central pillar in the formation, and two were dedicated to the spiral steps. .
The next step was laser cutting. The central piece had scoring lines which took multiple test runs on the laser printer to find the right settings. Moreover putting the central piece around the cogwheel was tricky due to the alignment. Once they snapped together, the pillar was relatively stable. addition of the stairs afterward was straightforward.
Final designs and parts
