Independent Project

Description

For this project I made a map of the United States, with the height of each state in layers of wood representing its population, and the flag of the states on top of each one as a sticker.

Reflection

Something that went well in this project was making the clipping masks and organizing the stickers. This process was pretty tedious but went well overall and it doesn't seem like I made any mistakes on it.

One of the challenges that I faced was tracing out the states properly, and deciding how to do it. I started by making each border between two states having two copies of the border, one in each state, but then had to change it afterward. Another challenge I faced with tracing out the states was making sure that there wasn't too much detail in the nodes, and that when I removed detail I didn't make the map look worse.

If I were to redo this project, I would try to get more engravings, for example an engraving representing the water on the front of the map, or an engraving on the back of each state showing some information. I would also want to separately print the states and shrink the outline border so that the states would fit perfectly inside of the outline without all of the empty space in between them caused by the laser-cutting.

Images

Image of prototype for cutting the states

Sticker printer running

Assembled final map

Creation process steps

Move the desired map image into a locked layer and use to pen tool to trace the outlines into a second layer. Make sure to not overlap any lines or make any redundant copies of lines.

Clean up the paths to remove extra, unnecessary nodes to make it easier to print and cut. The new, cleaned lines are shown in dark green.

To separate an individual region

Isolate the paths necessary to build the required shape

Use the scissors tool to disconnect and remove excess parts

Use the join tool to connect the remaining parts together into one

To create the sticker

Using each individually created region from a copy of the cleaned map, using the instructions above, use each one as a clipping mask for the desired image.

Arrange each region onto another copy of the cleaned map, this time with a path color of the required color to cut the sticker for the sticker printer.

To create the laser cutter file

Choose a metric to represent on the map, and choose the thresholds for each height of state. In this example the thresholds were for population of each state:

Less than 2 million: 1 layer tall state
2-5 million: 2 layer tall state
5-10 million: 3 layer tall state
10-20 million: 4 layer tall state
20-30 million: 5 layer tall state
More than 30 million: 6 layer tall state

Copy the cleaned map, and remove all regions from the copy that do not match the criteria for 2 layers.

Repeat this process, removing all regions that do not match the criteria for the layer being built.

Add any additional features to the first layer of the map, and add a box surrounding it.

Organize your shapes into the most compact possible area to save wood.

Ensure that the outside box around the first layer is set to the cutting width, any engraving details are filled and set larger, and the the regions inside and outside are set to cut.

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