Hw#2 Giant Living Hinge: Granizo

This homework assignment shouldn't have taken me so long to do, but it did.  A very long process. A process that is shown to below! I found a cool design that includes a living hinge that is "book holder". Since I try to avoid books with many words, I wanted to re-purpose the design to house playing cards, dominoes, or other fun activities.

The only problem was that the design was specifically intended for a crazy thin material, not 0.20 inch plywood. I started off by printing some cardboard prototypes to try and get the living hinge pattern without setting the material on fire, since it's such a tight pattern. The image since in  step '1.)', shows the scaled down version of the container, which I tried to implement but the tabs were intended for materials much more thin than cardboard. Upon that revelation, I redesigned the file so that it would be appropriate for the 0.20 inch thickness. Step '2.)' shows a successful cardboard prototype that fit wonderfully and also avoided fire.

Knowing that the sizing was correct, I moved onto the plywood model. I used the settings recommended for the plywood, and it led to step '3.)' in the process. It failed and caught fire. I wasn't about to quit, so I  made a file that was just the living hinge schematic to test different settings on the laser cutter to get to  the finished product. After trying multiple different settings, I arrived to step '4.)' when the hinge was working but wasn't fantastic. The best tactic for this kind of design,which was used in step '5.)', was to use a low speed (30%) , a low power (38%) and run the laser at 500 hertz, twice. The two passes allowed for a reasonable cut, and reduced the amount of burning from single pass, high power runs. Be aware that it did take me ~25 minutes  per run... and I did several...

Finally putting it all together in step '6.)' was a great relief. Upon my increased enthusiasm from a project that did not catch fire, I decided to add a liner, a thin layer of cork material from the shop. Having completed this long process, I am hoping that others are able to use my updated Zing settings to avoid spending days in the shop trying to figure out solutions. Looks pretty cool though...
 -Bvyan Granizo

Fusion File: https://a360.co/2T7wGLq   :      https://a360.co/2DTU6dL