Bath Uni - Stencils are cut!

Yesterday, Jordan, Nathan and I took some big sheets of orange perspex to Tim in the plastics workshop to get our scientific stencils lasercut. The process was totally fascinating to watch and Tim was extremely helpful. Imagine if all the technicians at uni were like that... actually being there to help us get our work done, rather than being an obstacle that has to be negotiated.

First of all, Tim took our 1000mm x 600mm sheets and cut them down to 700mm x 400mm, which is the maximum size the laser cutter can handle.



He then took the files off my memory stick and sent the first one to print:



It's a fantastic piece of kit - it should be for £30,000 - and it cut each sheet pretty quickly. In the Illustrator files, we had to set the lines as red (255,0,0) at a thickness of 0.1pt, so the laser knew where to cut. We decided to have the logo and name of stencil etched at the bottom, which is done by simply setting the vectors as solid black (0,0,0). We reversed the stencils as the etched stuff looks much nicer viewed from the smooth side.

Once finished, we took out the stencils along with all the pieces that had been cut out. I took a few of these as I am sure I can find a use for some of them. I also managed to grab two As, a 7 and a 2, which I will light and photograph and possibly use as my new logo. The finished stencils look amazing, just how I had envisaged them. I love the way the edge glows as it catches the light.