Laser Cut 3D Lotus

Having access to a laser cutter in a Fablab, designers at laxap wanted to give a try making a stacked laser cut sheet sculpture. They found much inspiration in the work of Gabriel Schama, but wanted something way simpler for a first attempt.

Having better skills for parametric drawing rather than hand-made illustration and taking a programmatic approach, their tool of choice is OpenSCAD, which allows to combine 2D and 3D techniques, and to preview the final result.

Design process includes these steps:

  • A central lotus shapes gives an oriental accent, surrounded by an intricate mesh.
  • Each layer is basically constructed the same way.
  • For 3d preview, the layers are stacked in OpenSCAD in the Z direction.
  • Laser cutting requires vector files, so the OpenSCAD project is modified to place all plates side-by-side on the floor, allowing a single SVG file export.
  • Finally the SVG export is post-processed in Inkscape in order to obtain individual vector files that can be sent to the laser cutter.

PH Newsletter

Free Weekly Scripts

Join our exclusive email newsletter and be the first to receive our free, useful Grasshopper scripts every week!

Comments