Nyctous Tunnel Book Test Cut

I have chosen to forgo the provided prompt this week on the top five specifications and top five constraints for a more general progress update, as time is undeniably my largest constraint this semester. However, I have successfully designed and laser cut my initial test for the tunnel book panes.

Layout sketch for the test cut

This test was intentionally rough and varied to gather information for a final cut while not spending overmuch time on details I may change. The two components to complete a cut are a raster engraving of the scene element silhouettes and a vector cut to separate the panes and associated hardware from the sheet.

With the raster engraving I composed three scenes, described as follows in their final arrangement form front to back. The first composes a lamppost over a road with blades of grass flanking either side. I primarily wanted to test the laser raster’s ability for detail in this pane, intentionally including skinny grass and lamppost features. The lamppost was also a feature I imagined putting an LED behind in my final cut, so included it here as a test for that. The second scene has two buildings with window cutouts on one side and a tree on the other, also ideas for final features being tested here. The window cutouts were especially an unknown for me, as I wanted the silhouettes to appear as buildings while not being completely unrealistic silhouettes. The third scene contains mountains and clouds, which I was most unsure of, but felt like a default background to use given my time in Colorado. In drawing the clouds I found myself including interior lines to emphasize their shape not possible with a strict silhouette, so I decided to try two different intensities of rastering on the clouds.

For the vector cuts, the sizing of the panes was a primary consideration, but also the connection to the hardware holding them together. In the last post I mentioned my rough idea to construct an enclosure to house the acrylic tunnel book, but I have since talked with some of my classmates during design critiques. We discussed potential enclosures for my tunnel book, and while sheet metal or concrete would likely fit this aesthetic, the first thought of making a wood box would likely not. Thus, I came to the idea of instead having the panes not enclosed but supported by minimal acrylic rails beneath the panes. The lower right section of this layout thus contains a large variety of rails of different thicknesses and different spacings between panes. To connect everything together, I planned for mating notches in the panes and rails, with a variety of tolerances to hopefully find a proper fit.

I used CorelDraw to put this sketch into a form accepted by the laser cutters on campus, with cobbled together images for the raster.

Test cut layout in CorelDraw

And then I laser cut it, where numerous problems arose, most apparent being the warp of the entire acrylic sheet.

In progress test laser cut with visible warp

This is likely due to the larger regions of engraving and cutting on the right side and the protective paper still being on the acrylic. In some laser cutting processes it is more ideal to leave the protective paper on to prevent acrylic smoke from depositing onto the transparent sections of the acrylic, but I should have removed it here. The increased heat from these elements warmed the acrylic up so that it warped and led to several passes to cut fully through.

Another issue was the inconsistent engraving in some places, perhaps partially due to the warping, so I will perform the raster engraving in multiple lower power passes for the final cut. The differing cloud intensity looks equally bad to me, being relatively even but not a good mix of translucency.

Test cut arranged both closer together and father apart

For the arrangement of the panes I found I preferred them much more in the father apart spacing. And while I faced a myriad of other issues and informative discoveries with this test that would take significant time to enumerate here, I think the overall aesthetic is starting to come together in a positive way.