Week 2

Computer-Controlled Cutting, Lasers, and Vinyl

Overview

This week I was tasked with both creating a push-fit laser-cut creation as well as a vinyl cut one. I decided to make something that will be useful in my personal life: Terrain for Warhammer 40k, a tabletop board game. As you will see below, this is a modular terrain piece with a second level and pieces that lock the whole design together. I also traced an image of the Dark Angels logo, a common sight in the game, to be for use in the vinyl cutter.

Vinyl Cutting/ Engraving

The mods node editor showing the design being thresholded, distance transformed, offset, and vectorized for the vinyl cutter

Here is the cut itself with a passed vinyl pressure test with the cross in the middle..

Black vinyl sheet on the cutter bed with the Dark Angels outline freshly cut into it

Weeding the excess vinyl and the finished decal. In resizing the png I lost a bit of smoothness. Notes for next time.

The finished black Dark Angels decal weeded and sitting on its white backing paper

Laser Cutting - Press-Fit Terrain Kit

This is the first piece of the terrain in Fusion 360, which was extruded from a trace and then a drop-in tab was added to connect it to the other parts of the terrain. Jagged edges were traced to both add the the effect of partially dectroyed terrain and to experiment with different sketching tools.

CAD view of the first terrain panel extruded from a contour sketch

The tab was multiplied using the rectangular pattern tool (which will be commonplace in this) with all of the different distances saved as parameters.

Three holes were added for tabs to allow for future installation of the second level that begins 3' off the ground, which is standard in the game. These were replicated with the rectangular pattern tool once again.

A second, right half of the terrain was added, this one is more aggressive with the ruined parts to allow for differentiation in cover provided to the units inside (an important aspect of the game). Here, I added holed that are the same size as the tabs on the right side, but their bottom is located where the tabs angled part (at their bottoms) is 3/16" wide, which should make a secure fit.

I then created a shelf that models can be put on. THis has the T shaped tabs, which will allow for the future locks to be inserted to link the whole piece together.

Here, you can see the two locks that will lock the tabs of the shelf/2nd floor in place as the tabs are put through the walls. This also adds dimension to the terrain piece. Because of the shared parameters between all of the pieces, the walls, locks, and floor can be assembled multiple different ways.

I then rotated everything to a single plane, projected all of the sketches, and exported a dxf file for processing..

Flat layout of three terrain panels with press-fit slots cut into their edges

Here is the printer model assembled with a squad of Space Marines taking cover from whatever may lurk around the corner. * Note there is an engraving but I assembled the shelf up-side down. Due to the very tight tolerances and fragility of the cardboard, I fear taking it apart.

The assembled cardboard terrain piece with five painted Space Marine models on the upper shelf and on the mat around it

Thank goodness there is good cover for the space marines against this demon prince! You can also see the two joints in this picture. The walls are joined by a v-shaped groove that slides into the slot until snug (Though not offset as perfectly as I would have liked). The shelf itself is locked in by small pieces as seen. The tab design can be seen in the model pictures.

Side view of the assembled terrain showing the tab slots cut through the wall, with painted models alongside for scale

AI use notated in the html

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