For this project I have decided to create a logo vinyl sticker for my laptop. The image below is the logo I used for my portfolio website during the summer of 2015. The current form of the logo is my newest intteration of a design I came up with many years ago - the image part of the logo is a representation of my initials J.G combined in a shape that is hopefully easily remembered.
My first vinyl cutting trial is a fail for two reasons, the image size is not large enough to remove the excess vinyl without losing some of the letters in the process furthermore the force (80g) of the knife I have used is not strong enough to produce a clean cut.
For the second cutting trial I have adjusted the force to 100g and enlarged the image size. This time with a bit patience and care I just managed to remove the excess vinyl and then transfer the sticker to the front of my laptop as show below.
Over the past few days I have been trying to think of something interesting to create, I know that I want to do something inspired by the concept of legos. Some of the factors that I am trying to incorporate in the design are: strength, versatility, aesthitics.
I had an idea at breakfast and began to develope it on a napkin - unfortunately I had no paper on hand. Inorder to create a block that would be able to fit together with many other blocks of the same shape - so that they can be layered and stacked - I have chosen to work with a haxagonal prism.
From the napkin-sketch I have created a 3D model in Fusion360 - I can make copies of the blocks and make sure that they fit together. The 3D representation also provides an infinitely better way of visualising the 2D layout than trying to imagine it in my head. The aim is that each block is made up of three parts that fold and tightly-fit together with no glue or tape.
I have spent hours drawing out the 2D layout in Fusion360 only to realize that I have no idea how to export the sketch in a format that can be printed. (I will need to figure this out sometime...) Instead I have decided to redo the 2D layout in Rhino or Illustrator. At first I tested Rhino, but it was driving me crazy trying to figure out where all the tools are. Illustrator seems to be a gentler learning curve.
My design includes notches that allow the different parts to fit together. I have defined the cardboard width parameter as 4mm to start with. Shown below is my final illustrator design for 2 of the 3 types of parts needed to make a block. The red lines will be cut all the way through the corrugated board, but the blue lines will only be cut part way through (my idea is that they will facilitate folding).
Conclusions of first laser cutting test: The 4mm estimate works well, I will have to reverse the direction of fold - I was hoping to conceal the cut along the fold, but it seems as though I will need to exposed the cut instead - the cardboard sits better this way. Refer to image below to see exposed cuts.
The image below is the final product folded together positioned alongside the three peices that interlock together to produce it.
