« back

Lasercut Locks [Fabrication]

fabrication

Big lock, little lock, laser, laser

two thing pieces of wood of widely varying sizes cut into blocky lock shapes with numbers engraved into them next to a hand.

First I got started by making a simple vector by combining rectangles in Illustrator. Then I simply layed on text which I later converted to outline to make into a shape for engraving.

screenshot of a vector editing software showing a lock shape with numbers inside of it.

Making use of a single 12 1/4 by 24 inch by 6mm (pardon measurment inconsistency) piece of birch markerboard from home depot I then visited the Epilog Pro and got to cutting. The big lock took about 25 minutes with all the numbers to engrave and considering the extra cut that needed to be made to actually isolate the cut from the markerboard.

shot of a hand holding up a foot long cut piece of wood representing a lock shape with numbers engraved into it.

For the little lock I simply scaled the vector down then added a new text object with only a slightly smaller font size so that the numbers were still vibisle and fit in the tiny lock shape. This cut took about 10 minutes total.

shot of a hand holding up a small cut piece of wood representing a lock shape with numbers engraved into it.

While I was pretty nervous approaching the big laser cutter at first I found the process to be pretty chill and inspiring to make use of the tool more.