Laser Cutter Madness March 1

Now that we have completed the formal learning about circuits for the semester, we began familiarizing ourselves with Solidworks and the laser cutter. Although I took a computer aided design class in high school doing the online tutorial in Solidworks was helpful. In high school I mostly did floor plans and simple 3D objects such as my bed room with a complete bed set and doors for closets and the entrance. Following the steps and selecting commands was comforting to me because I actually knew what certain commands did to the 3D object.

After an hour or more of doing the tutorial and listening to music which I truly enjoyed (thanks Cailey), we moved on the our next topic of the day, designing a carabiner on Inkscape. Downloading Inkscape took an incredibly long time so in the process of waiting for the program to download, we discussed the design of our carabiner which can be breakable and we were introduced to basic functions on Inkscape. We agreed that it had to be the maximum of 6cm long. 

My initial carabiner was not very pretty. It was not symmetrical or oval. A better mental image of my carabiner is picturing the letter D but not fully connected on the left side and rounder. I made a few designs for my carabiner and decided to make it the edges pointier instead of round.

This is my pointy carabiner design. I have not finished adjusting the dimensions on the actual one.

By the end of class we gathered around the laser cutter to retract the first carabiner design. The laser cutter had to trace the outline several times because the material was too thick. We were easily amazed by the glowing light of the laser cutting through the plastic. The wood samples of shapes made from the laser cutter were very detailed and smelled like a camp fire.

The only finished carabiner was functional (could hook onto another object and resist weight). I hope I finish my carabiner design and begin using the laser cutter for more complex designs.