02 Week
For this week, we had to create a pressfit kit and then make something with the vinyl cutter. I have very little previous fabrication experience, so being exposed to all these possibilities can be a bit overwhelming at first. I was struggling to decide what I wanted to make so I decided to be practical and make something I had been needing - an organization system for the drawers in my dorm. I made a simple sketch here:
Getting trained in the laser cutting process was much less intimidating than I thought it would be and it helped determine the form for the organizer much easier.
I had a bit of trouble with some warping of the material and I noticed that it wasn't cutting evenly. Some bits were out of focus, so I paused the job to re-focus the machine.
The prototype seemed to work pretty well, and the pieces were aligning properly. I didn't have issues with the notch size thankfully. Now I was curious about what other forms I could create with the laser cutter so I sketched out some ideas for a more organic shape that used flexures. I had seen someone use this to organize items of similar size and volume.
As I had some more to layout for the first organizer I just placed both in the same document for a test run:
I ran into a few issues. As you can see above the cuts were quite uneven! I paused the job again to refocused but I was worried that there seemed to be more smoke than usual so decided to stop the rest.
The flexure worked out okay, but only allowed for a certain range of movement before it began to break apart. Probably cardboard is not the best material for this, or maybe needs a different kind of cut for it to work better.
I think my organizer looks quite nice once I cut more parts for it. I think I would have made more variations on notch locations (maybe top and bottom ) and various lengths of strips instead of just one.
As for the vinyl cutter I tried to make a pinwheel... but I made the mistake of using vinly as a material LOL. I forgot how thin and sticky it can be, but I will try this on stiff paper later.
I ended up making a sticker for my computer for now, but I am really excited to use both of these further in the class!