Testing the limits of our laser cutter….

Well, Raster had posted a while back on this fantastic online box template generator and I’ve been meaning to give it another go.  It’s loads of fun to play with and gives accurate files to cut from.

I’ve been wanting to do cut-out work, similar to what you’d get with a jigsaw, so I experimented around with various settings, both in Illustrator (CS5) and the laser cutter.  Since I am a conundrum, I couldn’t wait to make a box that would fail to hold anything you put in it.

The box on the right was drawn with a stroke width of 5 and that seems to be about as narrow as I can go with our current setup.  The tiny calendar stone there is 2″ across and was etched with 50% power and 100% speed.

All of these pieces were made from Baltic birch plywood and, moreover, I made them for my mom (she loves ’em).  It just so happens that I got them done in time to show them off for Bay View Gallery Night–an amazing experience in and of itself.