Digital Ornament - Plexi Glass and Laser

Kyle Miller and Kory Randa worked collaboratively to create a four panel series of ornamental panels. The design started with an image of bark that was then taken into illustrator and live traced to create several levels based on the value of the image.


We first tested on the laser different power and speed settings to optimize the level of detail and the amount of time provided. With our first iteration we assigned the colors red, green and blue various power and speed settings. For our design we wanted the four panels to resemble tree bark physically and conceptually. We vector the sides of the panels along lines found within the bark, and we rastered the texture into the panel, leaving some spaces blank.This allowed us to ignore one layer and leave the plexi untouched to create an effect. We found that this process was rather time consuming, due to multiple passes, one for each color.


Because of the heat of the laser, the plexi started to curl, and forced us to use a heat gun in an attempt to flatten the panel again. Lesson learned, we began to use weights to keep our panels from deforming while being rastered.

We also learned from the time consuming process, that we could raster with one pass. We used various tones of gray which would use a percentage of the overall black power setting based on the value of the gray, white being untouched and allowing us to keep the effect that we wanted. This allowed us to add more layers of depth because we were no longer constrained by time.


This process did create a residue on the plexi that required us to clean to keep our desired effect. We first used glass cleaner, that proved to be ineffective. We next used rubbing alcohol, which was mildly effective, but still time consuming and required much effort. We next applied acetone, which removed all traces of the residue with little effort.


The wall panels are designed to be held together with a top and bottom rail. For the purpose of this prototype we used wood lengths of 1.5" x 1.5" (b x h) to create a frame. For the top and bottom we used a length that could hold the four panels and channeled a groove half of an inch deep to house the panels in place.


Project Specs:

Size of Panels: 18" x 32" (before edge conditions subtracted)

Materials: Plexi-glass and wood frame

Supplies: Laser Cutter, Heat Gun (from Brandon), Acetone (from Brandon), Rubbing Alcohol

Production Time: 40 hours