Fooling around with the Laser cutter

What?

I wanted to try the laser cutting machine we have to see what it can do. Essentially this machine cuts very accurately whatever you feed it as a line drawing. You can convert 2D into 3D by cutting and then assembling. The first piece I made was a drawing I had done that I wanted to put into a topographic landscape. I placed the dancing man and made the landscape around it and then made the line drawing as required.

The struggle began when I had to convert the drawing into planes. It was difficult to convert the 2D drawing into separate planes. Perhaps I could have started with a rough cutting of paper, layering and then making the drawing with those planes.

Then I bought mill board paper and used the machine to cut the different planes. The really tough part started after that. I was not very accurate about dividing the drawing into planes. I struggled to make sense of all the cut pieces.

So what?

Starting from the point of using a machine means understanding what the machine can do and fitting it to what I want to do. The machine does only a very small part of the process. My efforts both before and after are much more. Would it be easier to just cut it by hand? Not really.

What kind of thinking happened here? Something more complex – a puzzle solving mode came in, I would call this flow-chart thinking, plan making thinking. This kind of thinking can be very useful when working with constraints, can be creative during production, can make thinking elastic.

What next?

I should work on an abstract 3D form where I can use laser cutting to create very fine cuts.

Other thoughts:

Laser cutting is fairly wasteful if not planned carefully. The material commonly used for cutting – MDF and acrylic have very little real functionality. the machine cuts accurately, but what is it cutting and why?