So first of all, I have to say I am so very proud of these two lovely and somewhat angry war-owls Gentry and I made. In total, we spent about three hours in the laser cutting room. Each tiral took us around one hour, including starting the laser cutter and editting the file (10 min) and waiting for laser cutter to finish the job (50 min).

One of the reasons that we had to spend so much time doing actual laser cutting, was that we were not able to find an effective solution for the laser cutter to do engraving for different parts in one go. After we complete the job, Jack told us that we could try “color maping” which will make things so much easier and faster. For the midterm project, we would definitely try this method if engraving is needed.

Our actual laser cutting process started with launching illustrator, choosing “new from template” and coping the war-owl into the blank artboard. Then, we created multiple layers and cut pieces of different color from the war-owl to different layers. Adjustments were made for all of the edges to allign as much as possible.

After editing the file, we hid the layers that were not going to be engraved and set the stroke to .004” for engraving. We had various settings for power and speed in order to create the sense of layers that you can see from the pictures above and below.

our second trial

Above is our second trial (first trial was totally a mess because we didn’t figure out how to correctly cut so the letters and a lot of the pieces were also cut…and thus it’s not shown here), the darkest layer was engraved first, followed by the somewhat lighter layer and the lightest layer. Engraving each layer took nearly 15 minutes. We left the board in the same position at all times.

our third trial

And here goes our third trial. With changes in power and speed, we were able to create various darkness and lightness. The procedures for engraving was the same as outlined above.

After all the engraving is done, we went back to the file. What we did was to select the layer that contains the blue layer (largest, and outlining layer), and right click the layer, choose ungroup, and release compound. Then we were able to delete everything inside, leaving only the outline of the war-owl filled with blue. We set stroke to .001”, and loaded the pre-setting for cutting .25” wood.

The edges of our two war-owls are both clean and with minor charring.

The following are some pictures that we took after engraving each layer of the third trial. You can see the difference after each layer was added on.

after engraving the “blue” layer

after engraving the “grey” layer

after engraving the “yellow” layer

Overall, although we were not able to find the most efficient way to do this job, I believe that I did learn a lot through interacting with the illustrator and epilog laser cutter. Also, the final product makes me feel so accomplished!