Sliced cardboard bunny

Project date: September 2014

Design made by: Linda Wanders

Design made at: FabLab Reykjavík with the lasercutter.

Interesting links:
 * Download 123D Make Software
 * YouTube - 123D Make - Program possibilities
 * YouTube - Blender tutorial - How to subtract one shape from an other

I was interested to try out how easy (or not) the 123D make program is, and where the limits of the software are.

Step 1.


 * I started with downloading a free model from Thingiverse: the Stanford Bunny.


 * I cleaned up the model a little bit to my liking with Blender. Smoothing it out in the sculpt mode and slicing of the bottom to make sure it is nice and flat.


 * When your done preparing... Export it as stl



Step 2.


 * Next is installing the program and opening your file in the software.


 * Program is pretty straight forward. Try out different settings in the left menu bar to get a different results. Program does seem to respond pretty slow, but it is updating the preview of the model live, so have some patience.




 * Important: set the 'manufacturing settings' to your material size by clicking on the pen. Here you can also offset the generated cut sheet if necessary.




 * What is interesting, yet disappointing is the curve setting.

The idea is that you can manipulate the direction of the way the pressfit slices are generated. But there is no option to make a intelligent sliced model with multiple curves.




 * So I opted for the 'Stacked Slices' technique without dowels.

(But for assembly I think that dowels are very useful, sadly I didn't had it in stock at the time).

If you are logged in with your autodesk account, in the menu you can export your cut sheets.

Step 3.


 * After pre-cutting large cardboard sheets to the right size it's laser cutter time.


 * The cut sheet get generated in 2 colors, so I used the color mapping settings instead of the regular one's.

Rastering takes way to long, but with color mapping I can let it (vector) cut very softly getting the same effect as engraving the whole. Speeding up the process.



Step 4.


 * 13 sheets later.... Organize the parts by sorting the numbers.



Step 5.


 * Have lot's of glue sticks ready and it's assembly time...


 * Keep an eye on the 123D make design file because is also generates the assembly steps (bottom left of the screen). The big shapes are quite obvious, yet the little parts can be a bit confusing.


 * For alignment of the parts, place the new cardboard layer against the little line's on the previous part. And ignore the laser cutted dots on each part. (They seem functional for adding wire trough the model or something).



All done