PERSPEX

By far one of the most pleasing of houses was the Perspex model. It proved to be the most aesthetically pleasing and strongest of the street collection. 

The construction approach.

Initially I started with a raw (30cm by 65cm) 4mm plane of Perspex sheet. The plan at the start was to bend the edges of the house using no heating methods but on my first attempt the material proved to be too brittle. Heating and bending plastics wasn't something I have experimented with before but I knew it was possible with plastic...

-on CAD photoshop a friend and I constructed a shaded region of the model on which to cut. One of the many formats the laser cutter accepts are JPEG files. So I rendered out the PSD file into a JPEG ready to send to the laser cutter. Using another software linked up to the machine I made it so the shaded region was and outline only (so that the cutter knew what lines to follow).

-then I allowed the laser cutter to do wha it does best. The process of cutting into the material took around 2 minutes so wasn't too time consuming. 

-once completed the shape simply popped out of the Perspex sheet leaving a template. This sheet could now be recycled or reused by another student if needed.

-now I knew from my first attempt and bending the Perspex that it wouldn't work without the aid of heat. Thankfully we have a machine in the 3D workshop that bends plastics. The angle at what it does so is up to you...

It involved placing the material over the how wire and allowing the heat to change the molecular structure of the Perspex. The material becomes weaker and from this easily bends. In order to check that my bend was correct I used a tri-square as my guide (90• angle) 

LASER CUTTING PROCESS BREAKDOWN