Category: fabrication

For my fabrication final I had a few ideas but knew I wanted to work with brass. I wear the same brass earring everyday and i love it’s simplicity. I decided I wanted to try to recreate it. Using a ball peen hammer, I was able to make a basic tear drop form then cut it off from the rest with a hacksaw. 

 

I had the idea to laser cut images of leaves onto paper and then figure out a way to affix them to the brass. I was pleased enough with the concept and really enjoyed just looking at the two materials together that I decided to refocus on the earring and really trying to manipulate the brass.

The really thin grid paper burned a bit after it cut which gave a really wonderful organic quality to the edges of the leaves.

This is my first laser cut house complete with Ray Eames’ patterned roof. I’ve never digitally fabricated a three-d object so I thought that was the place to start with the laser cutter. I found a simple house pattern online.

And made some minor adjustments to the design. This was also my first time using Illustrator – somehow managed to avoid it despite a decade+ with Photoshop. So getting used to vector logic was fun/frustrating.

Below are the six final pieces – which were maybe the third or fourth try. Other attempts either were basic errors (leaving a stray vector that resulted in a errant cut) or needed more passes with the laser. The final version still isn’t perfect. I had to manually make the slots in the roof a little wider as the cardboard expanded somewhat after being cut. I did not bother fixing the bottom piece because I like the idea of using the surface the house rests on as the floor.

I used the router with a 45 degree bit. The shop doesn’t have what would have given me a bigger cut – resulting in a uniform pitched roof. I thought about making a jig and using the ban saw but knew I probably still wouldn’t get ideal results. Instead, I decided to see how far I could go towards realizing my vision with the constraint of the router bit. 

At first i was interested in a continuum from the most uniform machine – made to unique pieces using the sander. Although making measurements and building a jig, etc would have been more rational and considered – I knew I still wouldn’t get them perfect with the tools in the shop. But, less time spent intuitively using the sander resulted in much more elegant objects. NEAT.

branch, conductive fabric tape, green leds, wire, 9v battery.

i figured out my circuit: 9v battery, 3 leds and a 150 ohm resistor. but once the leds were on the branch, i couldn’t get more than two to light up. did the tree steal my power?