Laser test cuts!

     This week we are finally doing test cuts with the laser! It's very exciting. I am writing this blog after all my messing around in rhino because of the whole computer debacle. I went on my roommates computer to change my design for the laser test Monday night after I got home from school and walked my dog since I had already made an appointment with the laser technician Tuesday afternoon just to get familiar with everything. I'm glad to say that I finally have a new computer! My mouse doesn't work with it since newer Macs are all USB-C though, and I knew that but forgot, so I'm waiting for a dongle to arrive in the mail for optimal usage.

    I thought to myself, this will be quick- just flip the design around a few times into a tile and save that file, then do a cute pattern for another test, then have a nice hot bath as a treat and go to bed early- this was a LIE!

I found myself realizing when trying to explode the little petals and berries design that I had made that moving the hatches without the curves was not the way to go. Therefore, I took all the little pieces of the design that I had set aside and reassembled them into the picture. That was the first part that took longer than expected.

It looked interesting enough just by itself that I thought about rotating and layering the image (like taking boolean cuts or whatever) out of where they overlapped and going by the Fibonacci sequence to get a cool looking pattern. However, I then wanted it to look more possibly leaf like, so I though I'd mirror it and put both the halves together somehow first.

I tried sticking them together in various positions but I found that I liked interlacing them together. It kind of reminded me a bit of Sailor Moon transformation wands.

I wound up rotating the image so it was easy to see how it was mirroring on each side. I figured some sections would be cut out, some would be hatched, and some would have just the lines burnt in. So first I needed to copy out the image and make the parts that would be kept after laser cutting one second. I found that I kept messing up and accidentally deleting a part I shouldn'tve,  or I'd have to redo something to make it cohesive with the weird Escher-esque pattern that I had created. 

This just kept going on and on and when I was done this part plus adding the second layer of lines to etch in it was like 3 in the morning! I had done the classic Sophie thing where I had gone way too hard. I hadn't even filled in the parts that I meant to put in extra hatching, let alone spiral it around all Fibonacci like! I figured that this was honestly probably enough even though it wasn't a tile because I should probably sleep so that I could even get to my laser cutting appointment!

I did remember to check the size though, and realized that I had been working really tiny. I wanted to make sure everything was as correct as possibly before I went in, even though I figured I'd learn stuff anyways since it's my first time.

    When I got to the lab, Peter explained to me that the laser cutter reads lines as basically a divide, not an actual thing that can be engraved so he showed me how to change the width of the line. 

Not gonna lie it looks pretty sick.

The test was also helpful in showing me places that I had forgot to trim lines so they got cut! I guess this supports that doing a test on paper will probably be extremely important for when I assemble my actual project. 

I also had some other tests that I wanted to do. One was on copper tape. The laser cutter can't cut metal but this stuff is pretty thin so we gave it a go. The reason that I wanted to try and cut it on the laser was that in my natural sciences class I had experimented with putting thin strips of copper tape usually used for stained glass under clear glazes, as copper is an element that can add color to a glaze. I thought how it turned out was very interesting, and I think that being able to cut out images to put on ceramics would be fun and give more depth than traditional decals.

Under a cone 6 glaze in oxidation, lines turn metallic wth a green halo

Under a cone 9 glaze in reduction, much black/brown/ reddish orange halo effect

The initial test of cutting the copper did not work as the tech suspected, but we tried cutting the back too see if that would do anything. It cut quite nicely, and after I burnished the front of the cut copper tape with a tough silicon rib it seemed to etch in the cut, but not enough to make it easy to pop out like perforated cardboard unfortunately. I do think this would help if I planned on cutting out the design with an exacto knife anyways, as sometimes drawing on things and cutting them can get a little sloppy.

I also test cut a piece of latex that I had lying around. I had originally thought that I would have time to made a cute test design, like a little choker or something, but I ran out of time the night before and was too excited to wait the day of. It turned out really good (even though I just took a video that wouldn't upload so here's a blurry screenshot)

However, later that day I received an email from the tech saying that he had looked into it more and that the fumes were no bueno so we could not laser cut any more, darn! I guess that teaches me to do things before I'm totally ready- can't let my excitement get the better of me.