Today I cut 4 frames at Techshop with pretty good results.  It was also the first time I tried using Acrylic both to etch and to cut.  Acrylic allows for more detailed work than wood, at the expensive of it looking like cheap plastic.  Etching acrylic is more precise, but it’s difficult to get much depth. Here are the pieces:

Does the voice in your head sound like this?

This one is wood – forgive the awful camera-phone photo. It was a pain the neck – two passes didn’t fully cut through everywhere, though they should have given my test pass.  I had to use a palm sander for a LONG time on the back side to thin the material down to the point where the cut went through on the front side (thanks to Terry at TechShop for the suggestion).  The text that will go in the frame, behind a magnifying glass, is “Does the voice in your head sound like this?”

Next up is the Ant/Sun God piece that I talked about yesterday, this time etched

I made nice-nice with an industrial belt sander to clean up the edges – for some reason the bottom edge didn’t cut properly, but the sander removed a centimeter of material in about 30 seconds.  Much easier than setting up the table saw.  The sander also cleans up the burned edges like a champ.

I’m thinking that I’d like to have this piece be gold with black eyes, but to do so I may need to make it again and put a layer of masking tape over it before etching.  I’ll try other things first.

Now for the acrylic:

What will archeologists think when they find this?

Here I’ve cut the acrylic and etched to make it like the Rosetta stone.  I experimented with some graphite powder to make the etched text somewhat visible, while also giving a slight gray tint to the piece.  I may try other options – I saved the cut-out center piece for tests. Here is a prototype of what the finished piece will look like:

The text is meant to talk about the piece itself, and make you realize that everything around you will be a relic someday.

Last up is a cutout of the Mandelbrot Set.  Note how the detail is excellent in acrylic.  Now to make the piece – a self similar sculpture that incorporates it.