For this assignment, we needed to create a laser cut press fit kit with atleast 30 instances of atleast 1 unique part. I started with big dreams of making a tree, snake, or mycelium network, then remembered I'd never used Rhino and hadn't used Illustrator in years, so I needed to reel it in.
I Googled around for inspiration and found a pixel wall that looked like it had potential to form different wavy configurations (that reminded me of a snake), so I based my first part off of that.
...Then I made 4 other parts for good measure because I was afraid the rectangle would be too boring and I wanted to ensure substantial potential for flair. Also I liked the idea of putting stars on top of the wavy wall in the spirit of barbed wire or a spiky spine.
I made each of these parts in Illustrator, basing the slot size on my cardboard, which I measured to be ~3.5mm. (The full story is that I started with different ~6mm cardboard that the laser cutter did not enjoy, so some trial and error and resizing of Illustrator files was happening behind the scenes here, but it's not that interesting, so I digress.)
I then imported the .ai file into Rhino to model the shapes in 3D through extrusion. Look at those lil cuties!
You know what's even cuter though? Real life! Although I did have to oscillate between the Mill and the 8 due to alternating out-of-commission laser cutters, I eventually made successful test cuts at the 8, went through a couple iterations of small edits to the slot size to improve the fit (they needed to be slightly thinner than the cardboard thickness itself to withstand a light shake), then printed all my babies there. Note the change in color - that laser needs red 0.01pt strokes to cut.
The laser at the 8 is a slightly more automatic than the one at the Mill, but based on the settings we'd used during office hours there with the TA, I set the material to Mat Board and thickness to 2.5mm (1mm less than the actual thickness, since cardboard is less dense). The power was 33%, speed was 12%, PPI was 500, Z-Axis was 2.5mm, and Laser was Both. The cuts came out clean and crisp and reminiscent of holiday sugar cookies.
So, at long last, the kit exists. Yes, it has far too many parts, but you only need to use as many as you're having fun with. No rules! In total, there are 30 rectangles, 5 pentagons, and 10 of each of the other shapes. Here's a few different ways I had fun with them.