FLA-week 3: Laser cutter and biomaterials

This week we had to create amold using laser cutter and as a group assignment we had to cook our own material and pour it in our molds.

I used 5mm scrap acrylic pieces to cut my mold. I decided to make a star, my idea was to make something my elementary students can squeeze and play while learning new words.

The laser cutter we have at FabLab Armenia is Epilog Mini 24.

This are the cutting settings:

• Speed 4%
• Power 70%
• Frequency 4800Hz

Afer removing the star I glued another acrylic piece under the star template to get a volume and use it as mold.

I used FabLab Barcelona’s instructions called Biomaterials 101 on how to create biomeaterials

The reciepe we used was:

1. agar-agar (5gr)
2. glicerol( 6gr)
3. water (120gr)

I was stirring it continuously for 5 minutes until it became denser.

It was very satisfying to pour the masterial into the molds.