[02/17/2014]
Week 3:
Computer Cutting
This week we were asked to
think of a press-fit construction kit that can generate a
variety of shapes!
I thought of doing something
related to our culture. I was always fascinated by the islamic patterns
found in walls, floors or doors in the old Islamic Cairo and the arab
countries. So I thought of building a kit that could generate any of
those beautiful geometric patterns that could be used in wall covering
or building furniture.
   
After some research on the
internet to know more about how such design were thought of I
found this really interesting book Islamic
Art and Design that concluded that any Islamic pattern uses
either a triangular grid or a diagonal grid. The Triangular grid
generates the hexagon star and the diagonal grid generates the octagon
start. So I decided to design 2 shapes 1 will represent the dot or the
joint of the triangular grid with six opening and the other
will represent the dot or the joint in the diagonal grid with
8 openings. I will then cut rectangular shapes that when fixed in the
openings of the 2 shapes will generate any Islamic pattern you could
think of!
My First Attempts
The material that I used was
Plywood with thickness 3mm. I started with drawing the hexagon joint
with a diameter of 2cm and a rectangular piece on Inkscape to
test the parameters that will cut in the Plywood 3mm and the kerf of
this material with the Lasercutter found in the lab. In order to send
the job
to our Lasercutter I used CorelDraw and the lasercutter plug-in.
 
First Attempt
I Found that the kerf is
0.01mm so I used that to
fix the press fit openings in the joint since my original design was
with 3mm openings so I made it 0.29. Also I found out that the diameter
of 2cm is too small to accomodate the 6 openings since when I tried to
fit some rectangular pieces in the joint it was too weak and could
break one of the tooth so Idecided to make the diameter of the joint to
be 2.5cm.
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