For this assignment, we were tasked with laser cutting the Rice War Owl in an aesthetically pleasing way. We needed to make sure the colors contrasted well and that the edges were not burned. In order to do this, we first tested different power and speed settings for the etching process on the BOSS laser cutter. We first decided on a speed that would complete the project quickly, so we could test different variations, which was 500. By testing different small squares, we discovered that contrasting colors could be made using the 500 speed setting along with a power between 14 and 20. Anything more powerful was too dark and looked burnt, and anything under 14 power was not visible or had no significant difference in look from 14 power.

Additionally, we decided that instead of cutting around the outline of the owl, we wanted to cut a square around it instead to make it more like a plaque. There were several reasons for this. After looking at the other owls produced by previous students, we thought that any owl that had a body made of primarily darker settings looked burnt and out of place on its own. Placing a border of lighter wood around the owl allowed us to use darker power and speed settings without this problem. It also gave another contrasting color to whole thing, which we liked. We tested some small squares first and found that 40 speed and 40 power cut through our wood well without leaving the edges burnt, for our final owl it came almost right off the wood, and just needed a little sanding to take care of the rough edges.

With these settings in mind we cut our first owl at powers of 16, 18, and 20 for the different color patterns in our wood. Unfortunately, this came out too dark for our liking and the 20 power setting was not contrasted very well with the 18 setting and they bled together almost.

For our second attempt, we set the body to the minimum power of 14, and kept the other settings the same. This resulted in a much better looking owl, with some nice contrast between the 14 and the untouched lighter wood. 

The only thing we had qualms with for this version was the inner lining of the face, which we thought was too dark, as well small feather etchings, which we did not like the alternating effects of. So we went back to the illustrator file in order to play with some of the color settings and match up all the inner feather strokes. Using the same settings we had before, but with his new illustrator file, we produced our final design:

For this design, we liked the lighter parts on the face, as well as the darker etchings on the feathers.

Thanks for reading,

Tim and Ray