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Tips for Stencil-making with Illustrator and the Laser Cutter

Throughout our project, Max, Ricky, and I went through quite a few road blocks, one of which was making the stencils for our toast. Due to our choice of medium for this final project (toast), we ended up with a less-than-impressive looking final product on the surface. However, though our final product and the steps it takes to get there are fairly simple, it did take a fair amount of thinking and learning for the three of us to be able to determine that our method was the quickest and most-effective way to put images on toast, without actually changing the toaster. One of the things we learned during our struggles with toast-art, was how to take an image and get illustrator to make it a format that the laser cutter can interpret.

The first thing to keep in mind when using the laser cutter to vector cut, is that in order for the laser cutter to cut out what you want, you must put vectored images into the PDF. Simply having text from a word editor, for instance, will not be processed. If you are drawing images using illustrator, the vector input is already present, so you can jump to step 5.

Steps for Text:

1. Using Adobe Illustrator, select the text tool, and type out the text you are interested in laser cutting. Adjust the size and location.

2. Then, using the selector tool, select the text you wish to cut out (do not have it highlighted, simply select it).

3. With the text selected go to Type--> Create Outlines (if "Create Outlines" is greyed out, then make sure your text is properly selected).

4. Adjust your fills so that you have a stroke color, and no fill on the text itself.

5. Finally convert the stroke weight value to .001. Anything else will be read as a raster, not a vector.

6. Save your image as a PDF, and send it to the laser cutter!

#lasercutter #outlinetext #makerspaces

Today, Ricky, Max, and I decided we would try to put a very basic face on toast. Originally we had the idea to put more human-like faces on the toast, but once we realized how little detail we could get, we felt a bit discouraged and had moved onto text. We tried to put a fearful face on the toast to make it look like it was scared of us eating it. However, even still it is a pretty basic image. The top image is how the toast turned out, and the bottom image is the original, vectorized drawing that we did in illustrator.

After struggling with the inefficiencies of cutting tinfoil or sheet metal, we thought there might be a more simple solution. We then cut out this stencil and used a butter spray (probably cancerous, but any oil or real butter should work). The "butter" prevents the bread from having that toasted look, but it does still get warm.

We tried changing the density of the bread, which impacts how quickly it browns. This worked moderately well, but was not an ideal method.

One our first ideas was to laser cut tinfoil, but that did not go very well. The foil is too reflective and so no cutting happens. We tried using a sharpie to make it less reflective, but even still, we had no such luck getting through the foil. So, we cut out the word "toast" out of a piece of ply-wood, and then covered it in foil. We fashioned a holder inside of the toaster that would keep the foil/wood from falling all the way down, and then put that and the bread inside of the toaster. This is where we hit our first major hurdle. The setup we had did not allow for particularly accurate toasting. As a result, jus the "O" in toast showed up. We had to reevaluate.

Final Project: Toast

For my final project in Maker Spaces, I originally wanted to do some sort of lamp project and cut-out different images on cardboard, but when I heard that Audrey was doing that exact project, it was time to go back to the drawing board. Ricky Manley, Max Lloyd, and I decided it would be cool to continue the idea of having some sort of image show up through a cut out. As a result, we decided we would like to try to put images on toast. We thought by blocking the heat (just like blocking light) we could get different images "toasted" onto our bread. At first, we wanted to be able to put on images like faces or small text, but we had to come up with our design first.

The White Box is in place and in the show. We had a bit of trouble with the volume being loud enough to hear over the other projects, but it still works. During the show yesterday we were not sure all three of our notes were playing, but because we wanted our box to remain a black (white) box of sorts, we did not want to open it up in front of a lot of people. Today, all three notes are playing, so it seems likely that we just could not hear them yesterday with all of the commotion. The show will be open until thursday, so if you want to stop by and check it out, head to the art building!

Now for the hard part! We wanted to throw something together in little bits that could help us play the guitar but also something a user could interact with. At first we were thinking of connecting the servo directly to the base of the guitar next to the mic but it created too much noise and it was hard to hear the guitar over the sound of one servo let alone three. What we came up with was a little elaborate. We wanted to create a support beam that held all the srevos at a the right height to strum the guitar, drill that into the base, put the lid on and drill the lid onto the support then unfasten the support from the base. This would keep the servos completely contained in the lid and separate the noise they make from the contact mic. More on how this went in the next post.

As we were making the lid for the guitar we were also working on a way to string it. At first we thought about having a sort of metal wire to mimic the construction of a guitar but we finally settled on using fishing line we could find in the shop. To hold the strings in place we fastened each string to a backboard and ran them through metal rings and over the back to tuners. Our plan is to have the tuners accessible to the user even when the lid is on the guitars. This step completes the construction of the guitar!

Us constructing the lid that will go over the guitar! It wasn't the easiest to glue but we were finally able to hold it in the place we wanted it by putting some support beams along the underside of the top of the box.

Here we see Max measuring the height of our cover which will hide the entire guitar and hold the servos. The pattern of the hole in the resonation box was actually an accident. Our original plan was cut a circle into the lid of the cavity by drilling a series of 1.5" holes and cleaning the outside with a jigsaw. After cutting the holes though, we liked the pattern so much we decided to keep it!

Here we're fastening the sides of the resonating cavity onto the base.

Max and I are building our resonant cavity for our fishing line to go over. We plan to have controllable servo motors strum each string at different rates, and have the contact mic pick up the resonation.

Isaac Asimov

Over the weekend I read this article written by Isaac Asimov. Asimov talks for a while about what creativity is, and what allows people to be creative. He also talks about what factors lead to having a unique, new idea. What really struck me about this article, was Asimov's point on what settings promote the best creativity. He states that creativity cannot be forced, so those who come up with the best ideas are usually not the ones who are paid to do so. I completely agree with what he has to say. I think that it is extremely difficult to try to do something new, when being told to do something new. The times I most frequently feel creative, is when I am thinking about something completely unrelated and am able to make a connection between two previously separate ideas. I think that his point is particularly interesting given the way our schools are structured. So often in a class you are given a task to complete. Even if the guidelines are not strict, there is still pressure to come up with some product in a given amount of time. Likewise, Asimov suggests that the best conditions for creativity is in a group (of roughly 5 people), with low pressure. Classes are far too often well over 10 people, and there is frequently the underlying stress of earning a good grade. I do not think I have had a class that was able to effectively promote creativity as Asimov suggests.

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Our drawing machine in action, in case you missed Ricky's Blog.

Sound Project

For the next project, we are going to do something related to sound. We watched three videos to help whet our whistles: John Cage's prepare piano, an intro to contact microphones and contemporary sound art by Zimoun. I enjoyed all of them, but I think I was most captivated by the Zimoun film. In particular, he would take one simple thing such as a string with cotton on it connected to a motor hitting a box. At first it doesn't sound particularly interested, but with hundreds of them stacked on top of each other, it took a totally different form. I do not know how feasible it would be for us to make something of that magnitude, but it is pretty neat. I also really liked the idea of using the contact mic to amplify some everyday sound that we might not normally notice.

Drawing Machine Project

After a successful 3D printing project, the Maker Spaces class has now moved onto the newest project: The Drawing Machine. We are allowed to do anything and everything to make a drawing machine. Some people will use Arduino, others will use motors, and others may use natural movement. For this project I am paired with Ricky Manley. Initially we wanted to make a drawing machine that would respond to music. My first idea was to make a seismograph because it would respond to the shakes in the bass, but Ricky and I realized that it the drawings would likely be very random, and not really represent the input sound that well. However, while looking for a good way to build a seismograph, I stumbled across this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4YQonwQUDs. I then found the blog connected to this video, which gives explicit build instructions, and Ricky and I decided that it would be really fun to try to build one of them.

To follow the step by step happenings of our harmonograph check out Ricky's blog. I will post major updates here, but Ricky will be keeping closer tabs on the project on his blog.

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