For mother's day, I wanted to create a wooden sheep with a Bible verse that she could use as a piece of room decor. The project took me longer than I thought, but I learned a lot about the processes of laser cutting and engraving.

The first important step was selecting the material. Since I was going to use the laser cutters/engravers at BU's Engineering Product and Innovation Center (EPIC), I had to ensure the material and dimensions of the material was feasible enough to use. 

For the material, I decided to go with balsa wood since it was a material that could be laser cut/engraved and I enjoyed the aesthetic of it.

For the dimensions of the material, since the maximum dimensions of the 80 watt laser was 24″ x 24″ x 0.5″, I used wood that was 12'' x 4'' and 1/8 inch thick.

Now it was time for the design. At first, I decided to use Google Drawings since it worked and was convenient. However, after speaking to someone from EPIC, they recommended Adobe Illustrator instead since it would provide the machine with a more accurate depiction of the design since the program included vectors.

While creating the design, I had to do some research on how to ensure that the machine recognized which part of my design was intended to be cut and which part was intended to be engraved. 

The first step I took to ensure this was to differentiate the cut and engraving with different colors. The cut was drawn in red and the engraving was drawn with black. Next, I also changed the stroke thickness of the cut lines to .001. On the other hand, since my engraving consisted of text, I didn't have to modify the stroke thickness.










Finally, I went to EPIC, and using their software, managed to cut and engrave my design of a sheep. 

As stated before, I learned a lot about the process of laser cutting and engraving including material selection and being intentional about how your design is created. I hope to create more laser designs in the future!