Laser Cut Hail Mary Prayer Wooden Sign

Every day at 12:00 at Bishop Manogue Catholic High School, students and teachers pause from their work and stand up from their seats, to pray the Midday Angelus. Every day we say this prayer, yet the only thing to help guide students along when saying it is these ugly neon-colored pieces of paper with an opaque font that is unappealing to look at and is hard to read. While this sign does its job, this would just not work for Computer Science teacher Dr. White. So for my Final Ingenuity Project in my Intro. to Computer Science class I took it into my own hand to create a beautiful, meaningful sign that students would want to look at when praying the Midday Angelus.

Based on everything I have learned this year in Computer Science class my favorite unit was by far the graphic design unit. I took what I learned from that unit, as well as my minor experience with graphic design that I knew prior from doing digital art on my IPad, and took inspiration from the Our Lady of Fatima story to make the sign.

Problem Statement: Dr. White needs a prayer sign of the Hail Mary so that students can know what to say when praying the Midday Angelus. One interesting thing that I noticed is that Dr. White wants a wooden, laser-cut sign.

Design Supplies

• Device that you can do digital art with to create a design (I used an IPad Air 4th Generation with an Apple Pencil 2nd Generation)
• Program that you do digital art that is on your device (I used Procreate and Phonto on my IPad)
• Pinterest

Prototype Supplies

• Device that is compatible with a variety of programs and can connect to a laser cutting printer (I used my Macbook Air 2018)
• Program that creates SVG (I used Inkscape)
• PNG converter (I used an app called Magic Erase)
• Laser Cutter (I used my school's Glowforge laser cutter)
• Cardboard

Final Product Supplies

• Device that is compatible with a variety of programs and can connect to a laser cutting printer (I used my Macbook Air)
• Program that creates SVG (I used Inkscape)
• Laser Cutter (I used my school's Glowforge laser cutter)
• Wood

To start the process of creating the design of the Hail Mary Prayer Sign design which I would then laser cut into the wood, I started by coming up with interview questions to ask Dr. White about what he wanted the sign to be like. The interview I asked and his answer is:

How big would you like the sign to be? 20x18 inches

Would you like the sign to be decorated, if so any preferences? Mary, a cross, flowers

What material would you like the sign to be made out of? Wood

Would you like it to be framed? Laminated? How would like it to be preserved? Doesn’t need to be preserved 

Any color preferences? Laser-cut design on wood

Any other things that you would like me to know? Wood should be rounded on corners

So, with the information I collected from the interview I conducted, I came up with a VERY rough sketch of what I wanted my design to be. I knew I wanted it to have flowers to frame the prayer, as well as include some depiction of the Virgin Mary. I decided to take inspiration from Our Lady of Fatima and included a drawing of her when she was standing on the tree and also included imagery of a sun to represent the dancing sun from the story.

For the design, I took inspiration from photos from Pinterest and started making my design on Procreate. Once I finished working on Procreate and was happy with the layout and drawings, I went onto Phonto to pick out a font and then types out the Hail Mary prayer and title. I then put the two things together in Procreate and made it into a PNG. I made sure that there were no background mistakes between the letters on the MagicEraser app.

I then shows my final design to Dr. White and he approved it with no feedback. This was my first prototype.

In order to get my design ready to laser cut, I had to upload the design PNG onto Inkscape and then create a blank rectangle that then could be the background for my design. Once I did that I went onto Glowforge, the program of the laser cutter I was using, and I input the two layers. My first layer is my design PNG and the second one is the blank rectangle SVG that I made on Inkscape. I then adjusted the layers to size on the layout of the program. Once I liked its placement I had to adjust the settings of the layers, for the layer with my design, I put it on "engrave" mode and adjusted the settings for the material that we would be printing on which is cardboard. For the rectangle layer, I put it on "cut" mode and set it to the proper cut speed and power. I was then ready to print it on the Glowforge printer, to set that up we placed a large piece of cardboard in the printer and then all I had to do was send the print over and press to big glowing button to start it up.

After about one hour and 10 minutes, my first prototype was complete! I am super happy with how it came our, the lines are crisp, it's legible, and a pretty decent size. After printing it, I got feedback from my client, Dr. White. His feedback was that he wanted the sign to be bigger, for me to increase the size of the prayer in the center, and to create a border and round the edges for the third and final prototype. So I got to work, making a new rectangle with rounded edges, a border into my design, and making the prayer in the design larger.

Once I was finished with the new design, I got it approved and I came by after school to laser cut the final prototype. Here is where it went wrong. On top of the wood that I was going to print the sign onto, Dr. White placed a layer of masking tape so that the wood wouldn't burn. The only thing though was in the center of the wood the tape ended up getting double layered. So after we printed it the design didn't get fully burned into the wood in the center, leaving parts of letters missing, messy lines, and faded color. This is super discouraging considering how well the other design went but nevertheless, it is something,

Overall, if I would change anything about the project it would be the I didn't double layer the tape on the final prototype because the design totally would've worked out if it wasn't doubled up. I am happy that I choose this as my final project and I learned a lot along the way. Thank you for reading about my project!