LasercutChristmas classroom project in development

This year, I'm creating a new high school engineering program at Pembroke High School. As far as tools go, we've got three computer-controlled machines: Roland vinyl cutter, an Epilog laser cutter, and a MakerBot 3D printer.
These ornaments are from the laser cutter. I started with a picture of a horse, since my daughter is really into riding. Then I modified the picture a bit with Gimp and used CutStudio, the software that ships with the vinyl cutter, to trace the lines of contrast. I've also used this image to form the basis of a makerbotted cookie cutter, but that's another project altogether.
The original idea for this technique came from the work of several of my students in the Fashioning Tech class. Sam and Brooke were cutting images that they found online, and saw that the heavy black lines made image contours, which cut as a continuous line. What they saw as a horrible mistake, I thought looked really neat, and suggested they carefully glue the image outline to a backing sheet. They were hand cutting the background sheet, but it looks much more polished if they use the laser to cut the outline shape.
Read the Full Story » | More on MAKE » | Comments » | Read more articles in 3D printing | Digg this!Source: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/12/lasercutchristmas_classroom_project.html
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