Lasercutting & deciding on a design direction
After an introduction to the laser cutter we decided where to go with our lamp project
The lasercutter
The laser cutter is in the ‘Dirty Lab’ on the 5th floor of ITU. Ben introduced us to the machine which was really fairly easy to use. The only challenge might be to remember to turn on all the buttons (the left one by the window, the one down by the floor etc.)
As we were one of the first groups to have the laser cutter introduction, I had to quickly set up an Illustrator file with our group number and names. I have tried a laser cutter before, at my bachelor program at KEA, so this was not difficult either.
It was fun to see the laser work, as can be seen on picture 2 below, there’s a bunch of small “business cards” in the lab that show you the appropriate settings for each material that is available in the lab.
The last thing we were introduced to was the sandpapering machine that smoothened out the edges of our group sign — this was a bit necessary for our sign as the laser had been set to a bit too fast of a setting and therefor hadn’t cut through the cardboard entirely.
The only thing that is necessary to use the laser cutter is to remember this:
- Cutting lines: 0.01 points or less in the stroke
- Engraving: 0.02 points or more in the stroke (or fill color)
Deciding on a design direction
Realising all of sudden that Show and Tell II next tuesday is supposed to show actual ideas, our group felt a bit stressed to move forward and make some decisions. We looked at our old brainstorm about magic from last week and were mostly leaning towards the magic “in a child’s eyes” and animals. On our brainstorm we had particularly been brainstorming on deep sea fish, that have a natural light within them.
We also talked a lot about dragons as they seem to stem from the old “magic” kind of stories with Warlocks and knights. Dragons also have a natural light within them in the shape of a fire. We discussed how we could visualise this fire, maybe with some yellow/orange fabric and a sort of fan blowing air to make the fabric move. Though we really liked this idea, we felt intimidated by both the laser-cutting/form-giving aspect of a dragon, which is a very complex form, as well as the technology/Arduino-aspect as we weren’t sure how we would incorporate a fan and how we would work around with sensors.
As we kept the focus of magic in a child’s eyes we instead went a few steps back and focused on much more simpler shapes that a child would still find both magical and soothing.
A story emerged of a cute little light, that is afraid of the dark, and needs the child to comfort it to go to sleep — and in that sense help the child be less afraid of the dark at night in his/hers bedroom. We imagined multiple different ways to interact with this light, as it feels like a mix between a teddy bear and a tamagotchi. We talked about stroking it, and that would make the light within it more intense, and we talked about taps and sliding to maybe change the color output of the light. We also talked about whether it would be possible to make it vibrate as a secondary form of output to make it seem more communicative.
We really liked our idea of a companion light for children afraid of the dark. And we are sort of set on both interaction inputs and outputs in the form of stroking vs. brightness/vibrations.
The form however is something we could not decide on, and I think this will be our main prototyping purpose. We need to see what is do-able with both the lasercutter and Arduino, before we can decide on a physical form and the level of complexity in it. We have a slight idea of the material choice, as it would be some kind of matte plastic in which the light can shine out through, but still all the wires can be hidden — so far our material thoughts circle around something similar to picture 3 above of the dragon light.
