The laser rotation in the class involved had us making three different projects, an engraved and cut out journal, an engraved water bottle, and a 3D cardboard cut out. The first project I worked on was the engraved and cut out journal.
The first step was to create my design in the Illustrator software. After inserting the picture and making it into a vector image, I outlined the design with a thin red box that was the size of my notebook cover. By using both red and black in my design, I was able to cut out certain parts of the design and also engrave other parts. Once I finished creating my design, I saved it to a flash drive and went down to the laser. Using the instructions sheet, I was able to correctly set up the laser and print out my design. After printing, all that was left was the assembly. To create the pages, I took standard printer paper and cut it to the dimensions of the notebook, and I put all of it through a hole punch so I could put it all together with the spiral binding. In the end, I thought that the notebook turned out better than I thought. Also I correctly predicted the winner of March Madness, which was a competition between me and two other students who also did a basketball team for their journal.
The first step was to create my design in the Illustrator software. After inserting the picture and making it into a vector image, I outlined the design with a thin red box that was the size of my notebook cover. By using both red and black in my design, I was able to cut out certain parts of the design and also engrave other parts. Once I finished creating my design, I saved it to a flash drive and went down to the laser. Using the instructions sheet, I was able to correctly set up the laser and print out my design. After printing, all that was left was the assembly. To create the pages, I took standard printer paper and cut it to the dimensions of the notebook, and I put all of it through a hole punch so I could put it all together with the spiral binding. In the end, I thought that the notebook turned out better than I thought. Also I correctly predicted the winner of March Madness, which was a competition between me and two other students who also did a basketball team for their journal.
The second project I worked on was the engraved water bottle. I don't consider myself a very creative person, so I went with the Packer's logo once again for the design. I also decided to put my name on the water bottle to add a little variety to my design. Once I finished the design, I saved it to a flash drive and went down to the laser. Because the water bottle was circular, and we planned on engraving around the bottle, we needed to remove the normal bed of the laser and put in the rotational jig. This jig connected to the laser and would rotate the bottle as the laser engraved the design. Besides the jig, the set up was not much different than other projects I had done. Once my design finished engraving, all I had to was get a cap and I had a completed project. In the end, I wish I could have picked a cooler design, because I feel like a design going completely around the bottle would have been pretty cool, but in the end I was satisfied with the final product.
The third and final project on the laser engraver was a 3D cut out. Using thingiverse, I looked at many different design ideas. I couldn't however find one that really caught my eye, except for the dice. I don't know why I thought that small dice were my favorite design idea on the entire website, but for some reason I just thought that it would be a cool thing to have. Since I used the website to find a design, all I had to do was export the design to illustrator and set it up so that it the laser would cut out the dice. The laser set up was a little different, mainly because I planned on using quarter inch thick hardwood, but I was still able to set up the laser correctly with help from the instructor. The cutting out of the first die went pretty quick, so I decided to cut out a second one as well. The dice cut out pretty well, but sadly the laser burned a lot of the wood on the dice. This proved to be difficult to sand off, so I decided to just leave the dice how they were. But besides the color, the dice turned out pretty well. I will have to glue the pieces together if I ever wanted to use them as dice, but they also double as a puzzle so for now I'm keeping them separate.
The laser projects showed me many of the other functions of the machine other than just engraving. Throughout this station I was able to use Illustrator to create my designs and then finish them in the laser. There was a lot more that I could have done with the laser still, which surprises me. I would never think that the laser engraver would be able to do much more than just simply engraving things. I was also surprised by the quality of a lot of the projects made in the laser, because I was expecting a lot worse.