cube structure
As a way to get to know the laser cutter a little better, I experimented with an origami technique.
In this document I will shortly describe the basic folding technique and how I used it to make an object.
First, I came up with a way to fold paper. Actually I am not really sure how I came up with it. Perhaps I was inspired by a folding mechanism for packaging, and by experimenting with it I came to this shape.
The basic folding technique
What I like most about this technique is that no material is being lost when folding. The only thing that it needs is a few cuts. The next step was to repeate this folding technique several times in the same piece of material, so that it woud become a pattern. I started experimenting with this.
Test patterns
It was suprising how strong this pattern actually was. Because there is no loss of material, every cube has double strength. By playing around with this a little, I found out an algorithm that could be used to create such structures. I tried out this algorithm on a bigger piece of material, still without using the laser cutter.
First object, made by hand
This seemed to work. I decided to start working with the laser cutter by translating the algorithm to Adobe Illustrator.
Illustrator file of the pattern
As you can see, I used two colors for the cuts. The black lines only engrave the paper, so that it would be more easy for me to fold it, while the red lines actually cut it.
Laser Cutter Settings
| Material: 300 gr paper Black lines (engrave): speed=100, power=18 Red lines (cut): speed=20, power=100 |
Resulting paper from the laser cutter, with the previous object next to it.
It was quite a lot of work folding, it took me about three days.
but then suddenly..... AN ABSTRACT SCULPTURE AROSE!!!
pictures of the object made with the Laser Cutter
Next steps:
- automate the algorithm (programming) to generate structures;
- use a different material and make a lamp with this technique.
Thank you for your time. I was great fun.
