Laser-cut Wood Marquetry

by christyoates in Workshop > Woodworking

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Laser-cut Wood Marquetry

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This video shows a wood marquetry project using Rhino CAD to set up files for laser cutting wood veneer from a photograph.  The inspiration came from photographs I took at an e-waste recycling facility.

-I used Rhino to trace the photograph, then rotated, copied, and nested each individual part within my material work area.

-There are 145 pieces in each section, the first section was mirrored, then the pair of sections rotated 9 times create a total of 18 pie-shaped sections. There are 2,610 shapes in the entire piece. The smallest shape is 1/16” square

-The individual files were laser-cut on a 100 watt laser from 1/16" thick wood veneer.

-The wood parts were assembled using low-tack painters tape on the back, then taped with veneer tape on the front and glued in a vacuum bag using epoxy.

-The framing mat surrounding the artwork is also laser-cut.

The video compresses only 40 minutes of the assembly which actually took around 40 hours; I spent another 40 hours setting up the files for laser cutting and the entire project took about 120 hours.

This instructable is entered in a contest to win a Shopbot CNC router, and votes are most appreciated!  
Click "vote" on the upper right of this page.

If I win the Shopbot, I would use the machine to cut and prototype my folding furniture which can be seen on my website www.christyoates.com