Finishing planning/ cutting/ assembling first project

    After doing my tolerance tests and doing a bunch of material tests, I am ready to replan out my first project! It is Tuesday today, and I do not have class so besides some minor annoying classic life tasks like making food, tidying up and of course walking my dog I can focus on getting this done! Or done enough that I can plan it out and either do some super useful tests tomorrow or do both those and get it actually cut! Then I will be able to move past this and focus on the assignments that are actually from this week on the weekend. 

    First I looked at the original mirrored version I used for my test cut and took out some small parts to make it a little more simple. I looked at laser cut things that looked cool online were labelled as "mandalas" and seemed to have 8 or 6 points. I decided to go with 6 for simplicities sake.

I liked how the acrylic, bubinga, black walnut and black limba looked best after laser cutting, so I test interlaying them all together to see what they looked like. 

The magicalness of the bubinga didn't really show through when laser cut into fine pieces, plus with the difficulty of cutting it I might skip it for this project. Also, part of one of the cut out "N"'s was broken when I went to use it for the inlay comparison, which could be a materiality thing or not, but it seems safest not to use it.

The acrylic looked good inlaid in all of the different woods, however not so much with wood inlaid in it. The walnut looked better with the acrylic laid in it, but the black limba looked better with engraving. as it is, I am not sure if I want to add acrylic to the pattern at the moment. After seeing other peoples super cool projects last week I feel like perhaps I do not have to use multiple materials, and since the black limba and black walnut do not look especially interesting together I may not explore that too much. I may even just be terrible after all the research and just use the plywood because large amounts of it are easily accessible! I suppose I will make my pattern and see once I lay everything out all nice like cookies from dough how much area it actually takes up. I have noticed that many of the intricate woodcut patterns wind up having 5 or 6 layers to achieve a cool depth effect. I think 5 is enough but I will try and break it down all lovely.

I started trying to just take the blueberries and uninterlacing them from the flower petals for a first layer, but that was pretty tricky. I wound up using the circle tool and making more circles that matched the original ones.

Instead of untangling a whole copies mess of these images, I figured I could resolve how two of them fit together, then add the two halves of the images where they intersected to make a new one, and then rotate that.

the worst part of that is that I had forgotten what i had used as the center of rotation so it was copying wonky. however, after lining it up with the old circle of copies, i was able to copy it correctly- I only had to clean up the center a bit.

This trimming to make it just where to cut it out is taking forever and it is making me think that I am insane or maybe going insane. I do think that the following layers will be much easier though.

The following layers were definitely much easier and quicker- I just had to offset and mirror a few small parts. I made the outside offset thicker so that I could accommodate the small circles being cut out still.

I once again realize that I am going way too hard on this but I am definitely past the point of no return.

I tested the cut lines of the top layer on paper first because I had time, and I found where I had cut when I didn't want to, and not cut when I should've and fixed that.

However, I was rushing when I cut the second layer and just cut it out- the few places it missed cutting at the edge I was able to fix with an exacto knife, but in some places the small circles did not cut, or had even migrated! Hopefully I have time to redo it, but if I do not I suppose nobody will notice the mistakes for now except me.

I continued to work on the layers, eventually getting to 5 all together.

I did manage to nest them a bit... rotating when so they fit, but due to the size of the project that was difficult to do in any way that would've more effectively made use of the surface area of the plywood. 

I also had noticed that when I accidentally dragged the circle on the gumball and extruded my curves, rhino would get super upset with me and freeze or lag for like 5 minutes or so. I mentioned this to Peter, and he said it probably is because I have so many intricate complex curves that I am extruding that rhino has to work extremely hard and does not like it. Therefore, I am not going to try and render my entire model in 3D.

I started from the bottom layer (which I did not wind up laser cutting in the end) since it had the least amount of curves. I had troubles capping it, possibly because it was too intricate. Maybe I could do it if I watched the tutorials again, but I am so burnt out by this project. It is my own fault. I wanted to stay at school in the think tank and work on this part the the beginning of the next project so I could stay focused away from my house distractions like my dog and possibly cut that unnecessary fifth layer but my computer was not connecting to the school internet and I became frustrated.  I stacked the bottom three layers, as the second one was where it was making rhino lag and have difficulty. 

Actually, my whole computer keeps freezing and I keep having to restart it. Well, once besides after I came home and my computer still wouldn't connect to the internet. Maybe its the new refurbished computer, maybe it's rhino, maybe it's me being cursed as my phone also stopped working yesterday (and therefore I wasted hours panic comparing cost vs quality on phones- something happens once a year). 
Which is great. Just what I need.

Time to hold down the power button like I'm holding a pillow over its head smh

While that reset, I glued my piece together. I used spray glue because it is easy and I wanted to be able to possibly pull it apart and reassemble it later with pieces that are cut even better- I like perfection but at this stage of the game I've wasted so much time, energy and brain cells I don't think I need to worry about it anymore. Spray glue is gross and horrible so I sprayed it over an inside-out garbage bag that I could just put right side around my kitchen garbage that my sometimes-housemate filled way too full for reinforcement when I was done spraying. How does that guy make so much more garbage than me? It's a mystery.

I put it under a cutting board with a heavy glass thing on top to set. Guess if I have to include a picture... it's this one of it assembled but not glued.

Of course, all my photos for the next little while will be even less quality than usual due to being taken on my trusty backup phone that I wind up using every time something happens to my phones that actually work.