Laser cutting

Fred Aldous are no longer taking laser cutting bookings with it being busy to the run up to Christmas. But I've found this new place called Fablab who charge £50 an hour, their easy to get too and are friendly and helpful. I was advised that the laser cutter is only compatible with svg and pdf file format and taught how to use the laser cutting machine myself. I managed to cut things out of acrylic, cardboard and wood. I tried cutting this 1cm thick flooring material but the laser cutter didn't cut through it, however, it did leave a burnt smell behind. The settings for the power/speed had to be changed depending on what was being laser cut. Materials can also be etched using the laser cutter just by slowing the speed. The laser bed is only 300x600mm so you can't work on a very large scale but it wwas fine for what I wanted to do.

Riitta Ikonen

Riitta Ikonen came in to college to give us a lecture on her work. She's a Finnish born Illustrator that loves to bring play into her work. I'd never heard of her before and the poster of her snowflake ( I didn't know it was a snowflake until she gave her talk) installation didn't really grab my interest. Ikonen was interesting to listen too, her lecture was playful and funny, very much like her work.

Although an Illustrator, her work focuses mainly on photography of nature and her quirky costumes which she creates herself. Her work tries to tackle serious issues like global warming but in a not so serious way that's personal to her. For instance her snowflake installation (below) was a response to the lack of snow in Finland when she went back to see her family for Christmas.

She's collaborated with many artists like Anja Schaffner and Anni Koponen but is currently working with Ian Wright in New York.

Boris Bally

American artist Boris Bally also recycles road signs to create a multitude of objects like furniture and kitchenware.

Metal Cutting

I wanted to cut out my shapes from metal and the laser cutter won't cut through metal so I looked around the Manchester area to find someone who could. After some research I found a metal cutting company based in Stockport but they only cut aluminium which I thought at the time would do the job. I wanted the shapes I'd designed to be cut out of metal then bent to the angle I wanted them and found that aluminum would have a cracked look around the bend. I was directed to another metal cutting company based in Hyde called Coleherne and after explaining what I wanted to do and that I was a student they kindly offered to cut the shapes for me. Unfortunatley for me Coleherne don't work with Adobe programs and I was told to convert my files to a dwg format otherwise they couldn't help me. I took a sheet of galvanised metal I'd bought with me and with my work on a pendrive in a dwg format I was ready. The files needed alittle tweaking when I got there but after that we were ready to get my metal shapes cut. Two shapes were cut from the galvanised sheet but they had too much burr around the edges. Coleherne kindly offered to cut the shapes out using their own metal sheets and this proved to be more successful. The shapes still had alittle burr but they could easily be smoothened using some scotch brite.