computer-controlled cutting

vinyl cutting

The first individual assignment for this week was to cut something using the vinyl cutter. Like many other of my classmates, I decided to make a laptop sticker.

I chose to cut out the original logo for one of my favorite bands, JANNABI. They are a Korean indie rock band that I really love, and I especially like their original logo.

I used Illustrator to prepare the logo for printing:

The printing part was fairly straightforward. I ran into a slight issue with the machine's vinyl alignment at first (it was slipping off of the wheel because I hadn't positioned it correctly), but it was a simple fix.

Final product:

laser cutting

The second part of this assignment was to use the laser cutter and design, lasercut, and document a parametric design kit of sorts. This was my first time using a lasercutter so I was a bit worried about this part, but it ended up going over (fairly) smoothly.

I decided to create houses for this project. for this, I took inspiration from the canal houses of Amsterdam — there were also many existing designs online (apparently people love lasercutting birdhouses), which helped me conceptualize the design.

The designing was done in Fusion: parametrizing the design took a little bit to set up, but it was a life saver in the end.

I set the lasercutter power to 100 and speed to 24, which seemed to do the trick. at first, I ran into issues with the cardboard not cutting all the way through (I had the speed higher and power lower).

The lasercut cardboard pieces:

I didn't have to make any adjustments after lasercutting the design, but I actually ran into an issue before attempting to print (which our amazing EECS TA Anthony helped me out with — thank you Anthony!). I had parameters set for the houses, but I hadn't properly set the dimensions, so the scale was wonky when I exported the dxf file to print (instead of ~4mm to match the cardboard thickness, the dimension reset to ~60mm... oops).

But printing went smoothly, and the houses were fun to assemble:

I realized I didn't get the ratio of the houses correctly and that for next time, I should probably make them taller compared to the base width if the idea is to make them look like the houses in Amsterdam. I also think it would be fun to design different types and angles of the roofs while keeping the joint design uniform, so that you can mix and match the houses.

The lasercutting experience was fun, but I don't feel entirely comfortable with Fusion (last week was my first time using it). While I generally understand the logic and mechanics behind parametrization, I think getting proficient in Fusion will be a challenging process... but I'm sure I'll get many opportunities to practice in this class.

lasercut house file