One of the assignments this week is to make a parametric cardboard construction kit on a laser cutter. I like platonic solids, so I'm going to base my kit on a dodecahedron. I sketched these tiles and connectors in Fusion 360.
This past week we learned how to use a vinyl cutter. This is a new tool for me and I'm excited to try it out. As a small token of appreciation for formalizing digital circuit design, I decided to cut a portrait of Claude Shannon to apply to my desktop computer.
Not surprisingly, there aren't many vector images of Claude Shannon online. So I edited a raster image in Photoshop until I had a nice looking two tone version. I also managed to vectorize this image in Photoshop, but whenever I tried to save the results the program got stuck. So I installed Inkscape and used it for bitmap tracing.
This week's topic is how to make printed circuit boards (PCBs). Our assignment is two-fold: use a desktop format mill to cut the board, then solder on the components. The board will be used later this semester to program other microcontrollers.
Files: [starflake.io](/designs/05_starflake.io)(render with [libfive Studio](https://libfive.com/studio/))
This week's primary assignment is relatively unconstrained: design and print something that couldn't be made with subtractive techniques. I decided to explore curved surfaces with severely constrained accessibility. This was also a good excuse to learn [libfive](https://libfive.com/), since functional shape representations enable a more diverse palette of interesting deformations than traditional b-reps.
