When I began to look through the books for a project to make I immediately began to translate the 3D images in front of me into 2D shapes. I knew that the focus of this project was to draw these images in such a way that they could be reproduced in the 2D environment of the laser cutter or plasma cutter. This required a vastly different approach to problem solving than manufacturing the same item in three dimensions would. Each piece would need to be formed from several individual pieces, each precisely sized to increase width and convert the 2D to the 3D.

I chose to draw a flywheel. The flywheel is used to take an energy source and extend its power by translating the initial rotational energy into a massive object to be released over time. In the case of this flywheel, the output energy is focused to a propeller.

I began with the outlines of the different shapes as shown in the woodworking book.

As you can see, these shapes gave me a fairly good representation of what I needed to draw in Illustrator. However, I encountered two challenges that I had to tackle when drawing. The first issue was that the scale of the photo was incorrect. For this reason I had to scale everything up by a factor of 16%. I got to this number because I knew that the diameter of the flywheel had to be five inches. I divided five by its actual diameter to get the scale factor. The second issue was that the page bent off as shown in the top edge of this photo. Therefore, I couldn’t simply trace the image above. I had to redraw.

I was able to expand my knowledge of Illustrator throughout this project. I learned more of the hot keys and shook off some of the rust that had built up since I had not used the program since 2013. Below is the image of my final drawings:

Going clockwise from the upper left the parts are: flywheel, propeller blade (1/2), pull ring, stanchions (1/2), boss, spacer (1/2).

The hardest part of this project was forming the complex curves along the propeller blade and the stanchions. I had to experiment with the pen tool (setting multiple anchor points) and the curve tool in order to get the best possible curves.

The most annoying part of the project (but also the most crucial) was scaling up every single dimension of each part. It took a while but ensured that the pieces would fit together when cut out.

Illustrator file: flywheel