Laser Cutting

Since my poor bonsai is struggling to grow, I decided to make an example bonsai out of cardboard that it could look up to. I experimented with joint sizing, cutting slots ranging from 2.5mm to 4.5mm in order to ascertain the perfect fit. With a slot size of 3.5mm, accounting for .48mm of kerf and with 100% power, 30% speed, the cutout pieces were created and ready for assembly. Further joint testing from our group project can be found here.

here.

Parameters and constraints were set to easily scale the leaves and branches as needed while still retaining the optimal slot size which would allow them to fit together in various construction formats.

Vinyl Cutting

To practice vinyl cutting, I loaded a design that I'd made for my mom, with celtic knot and spiral details that I thought would make a nice sticker. I initially made the design too small and did not use enough force, but then updated to 2.1" x 2.3" and increased force to 100g. This produced a usable sticker, though some of the smaller design details were lost. I'd like to attempt a larger, more detailed design using the learnings from this first test.

Excited to keep using these tools in coming weeks!