Week 1: Computer Controlled Cutting
Laser cutting
For my second assignment, I built a desk monitor stand. I bought a lower-end monitor which has low level of adjustability. As a result, it sits a few inches too low on my desk. This setup is not ergonomically optimal and I thus decided to raise my monitor with a custom shelf.
I started by designing the product in Fusion 360. The shelf is simetrical in 2 ways; I only had to design a quarter of it an double my design. I started by building the front left leg and a transversal support for the top plate. While i did not make load capacity calculations, I estimated that 8 legs would suffice to support the weight of my monitor. Moreover, I designed the system so that the transversal piece sits on top of the legs, leveraging the weight as a compression mechanism keeping the product assembled.
I then mirrored my work to add the rest of the branches.
I then built the rest of the system, including 8 legs, a top plate and a shelf.
I then laser cut each part of the design. I first transferred projected sketches of each part to a raster file editable in Adobe Illustrator. I then used the Harvard Lab Laser cutter and the provided cardbord to create each piece.
I then assembled the parts together
I had to scale down my design to fit it tot he laser cutter bed. This however change conveniently made for a tighter fit on the joints.
I encountered issues with some of the parts and had to recut them. For logistical reasons, when I tried to remake the missing pieces, I had the use the GSD's cutter and made a mistake with the scaling. As a result the pieces didn't fit with the rest of the product.
Nonetheless, the stand works as intended and props up my display. My setup is now more ergonomic.
Vinyl cutting
For the vinyl cutting part of the homework, I decided to make a disco ball sticker for my laptop. I used a png file i found online and modified it in Adobe Illustrator.
I removed the background of the image and vectorized the PNG. I then sent it to the vinyl cutter using MODS. I chose to use black vinyl for the sticker.
Once the vinyl was cut, I used tweezers for weeding. My design counted many little squares to remove which made weeding tedious. I decided to leave in some of the squares as it made for a cool shadow effect on the disco ball.
Source for the image: https://www.jing.fm/iclip/xRwRhJ_snow-disco-ball-white-clip-art-disco-ball/
