Laser Cut New Babylon, Radiohead and Joy Division

This week is the laser cutting week. I got to spend some time with both the 50watts and the 75watts laser cutters and experimented with different materials.

Card Stock Paper: Patterned Box

I used the geometric shapes from my old project New Babylon, laid them out on a box template and cut on the 50watts laser cutter. The setting was 30 for speed, 50 for power and 500 for frequency. I tested the setting out by cutting only one row of shapes and it was a success.

 

   

Overall they were cut well, though a few of the small shapes towards the bottom of the paper was not cut completely, the reason being the laser gets weaker as it gets away from the top left corner.

  

I then folded and glued the boxes.

The fun part is playing with the pattern with the flashlight I made a few weeks ago. I knew I made that flashlight for a reason.

 

Plywood: Burnt Joy Division Fan Art

I decided to recreate, inaccurately, this iconic album art using plywood and the 75watts laser cutter.

  

After testing on the first “wave” shape, I slowed the speed down from 20 to 10 to have a better cut (the power was already at 100). Everything got cut nicely the second time except for the wave in the second row. I tried a couple times more, it was finally cut but turned out very burnt.

I then glued the waves together and used rubber bands to hold them together.

  

  

 

Acrylic Etching

Etching on acrylic was a fast and easy process. I etched on an acrylic box I bought on the 75watts, it took only a few seconds.

 The text is lyrics from the Radiohead song “Last Flowers”

The etching works perfectly with my Physical Computing project this week:

 

1 Comment
  • Ben Light
    Posted at 11:52h, 28 September Reply

    Nice work. I’m glad you tried many materials and projects on the laser. The best part of the laser is how fast you can prototype with it.

    Great documentation.

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