The Columbus Idea Foundry is perhaps the only place in town where the public has limited access to laser cutters. After pondering joining the Idea Foundry myself, I contacted them and they put me in touch with John. I then hired John for his laser cutter expertise and Idea Foundry membership. The decision paid dividends. The laser cutter rents hourly so all mistakes made are magnified in loss of material and additional time needed. John was instrumental in the laser cutting process though and helped to reduce lost time with his knowledge of the machine and material properties. He also created a wooden jig to hold the blocks, ensuring they would be in the same location with each pass. (He also makes his own amazing laser cut/etched pieces and more, which are available on his site and etsy store)

Uploading the files is where we first ran into issues. I made the mistake of not outlining my text files within illustrator before leaving my home computer. This meant that the new computer at the Idea Foundry was substituting its own set of typefaces for the sets that I had agonized over. The largest ramification of this substitution was that all of the block letters needed to be replaced with a similar font to the one I had chosen earlier. Once again, all mistakes made are magnified as I’m paying by the minute. The less significant loss in data was the state abbreviation labels which had been located on the map. The new computer had replaced the original text with a larger font and the labels were no longer visible within the bounding boxes. Instead of modifying the file, taking time to accomplish, John and I made the executive decision to delete them and move on sans labels.

The laser cutting, when we eventually got it dialed in, is fun to watch. I had only limited experience with the laser cutter in design school but enough to recognize the distinct aroma of laser burnt wood. It was as fascinating as I remember it being, particularly as the depth of the letters was being engraved. John and I agreed upon setting the laser to 60 speed and 100 power. This allowed the laser time to discard enough material for there to be a tactile difference when handling the blocks. The map and pictograms were both done at 100 speed and varying levels of power. If this project is to be taken on again, the speed should be slowed for the pictograms as they are not quite as deep as I may have liked.

Flipping the blocks had been always been a sticking point in my head. The file had been set up to mirror the pattern of blocks; for example, ensuring that the back of the letter ‘B’ would show a ‘bicycle.’ John’s jig helped immensely making certain that the blocks were correctly aligned. All I had to do was flip the blocks within the jig and not screw up the file. I did not hold up my end of the bargain.

In the haste of removing the numbered blocks from the file, the pictograms for the additional vowels were not located in the same place on each of the template files. This now meant that on three of the duplicates blocks (O, U, B) there were mismatched pictograms. Instead of the second ‘U’ having ‘unicycle’ it now had ‘bear.’ Needless to say, was not thrilled about the screw up but learned from the mistake. Glass half full, was later informed that bears are in the ursidae family so we will go with that as the reasoning behind the ‘U’ – ‘bear’ block. Continued reasonings: unicycles only have ‘one wheel’ and octopuses are ‘ugly.’ Yep.