Finding a Design

Finding the right interlock pattern was quite a task for me. Firstly, I wanted to work with an arrow pattern. I tried different types and ways to make it work. For this I drew my pattern on paper, cut it out and fiddled it together. The results were not very satisfying. The pattern and the material did not smoothly intertwine, the result were gaps between the elements which could be a problem when designing clothes or something similar.

A few designs later I found a pattern that looked a bit like a castle, but that seemed to have the potential to actually work or so I thought.

I used the knowledge I gained about arrows to optimize and to create an interlocking pattern. I added arrows on the top, made little cuts on each arrow and added little blocks on each edge in order to make the single elements interlock with each other more securely.( Picture 4)

Designing in Rhino

As a next step, I replicate the design into Rhino. The previous size of my pattern was 50 x 40 mm which was very small, that's why I decided to make it a little bit bigger 92x100mm. It was the first time that I worked with Rhino, therefore it took a while until I came up with a usable result.

I then decided to work with denim, which was a big mistake. The material showed nearly perfect behavior when treated with the laser cutter, but in the long run, the material turned out to be way to loose and floppy.

Another issue was that the elements would become quite fuzzy at the edges. Originally I wanted to build a pillowcase, which did not work out due to the issues with the denim material. The Interlock pattern itself works just fine.

Color Mapping setup
Next time working with denim I will increase the Power setup. Maybe this will melt the edges of the fabric in a way that it creates hard edges. And so prevent it from frazzle.

Used Setup: Speed: 50, Power 35, Frequency:50