Laser Cut Pendant / Keychain

INVESTIGATION                 DESIGN                   PRODUCTION                   EVALUATION

Design Brief

You will be designing a range of Laser-Cut Pendants/Keychains for students.  The designs will use 3mm plywood as the main materials, and the main application we will use for the design is Adobe Illustrator.  The design must fit within a 50mm x 50mcm square piece of plywood.  

This project challenges your abilities to follow the Design Process using Computer Aided Design (CAD)  and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) to develop and produce designs.  We will be using a Laser Cutter to produce a simple pendant or key-chain from 3mm Plywood, of your own design.

This project also challenges your ability to self-instruct yourselves in new techniques and terms, self-identify things you need to know and find your own solutions through research.  Particularly, the language of laser-cutting and working with illustrator can be confusing, and it is important to be able to find answers yourself when you run into challenges.

Laser-Cutting poses some specific challenges - the design must be perfect before it begins cutting, as the machine can't learn half way through that it's not working out, and adapt.  So, unless it's right, it's very very wrong!  Also, the design must be drawn exactly how the machine can read it in it's "language", known as G-Code.  This covers a few things, such as how thick the lines are, what colour they are, and the shapes they have.  

Some Helpful information can be found Here

This link may be confusing for you to begin with, and part of the Investigation tasks will be to define and understand these key terms.

Good Luck!