Cactus Coasters - Design Tech Project

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 My project is a wooden pot, with detachable green acrylic coasters. I made it by first gathering inspiration from similar projects other people have made and making a proposal. Once the proposal was accepted I started working in Illustrator to make the cactus print for the coasters. When that was ready, I waited for my green acrylic to arrive and put myself in line for the laser cutter. I had to do a lot of test prints for my coasters, since they each have a slot that needs to fit perfectly into the other coasters. I had to do three test runs and use a professional measuring tool to find the perfect measurement. After I found them, I was able to use the laser cutter to make all my coasters. The second part was my pot. For the pot, I had to import correctly measured shapes of my pot into an app called Easel. Easel then connected to the CNC cutting device and I was able to cut out my coasters. Then I chipped away at the edges to keep the circular shape and glued them all together. I came back two days later and did some extreme sanding, then I put on the finish with a cloth. As a last step I decided to glue an extra coaster into the pot slot permanently with wood glue and it was done. 

What I like most about my coasters is the unique nature of them. When researching, I wanted to do something that seemed a bit challenging and different, and this idea was perfect. There were two big challenges along the way, the first was the size of the slot. We had to do a few tests to understand how big they had to be. The second challenge was with illustrator. When we imported my cactus design onto the computer connected to the laser cutter, the lines that needed to be cut would not show up. In the end Mr. Grisbee had to help me by bringing some elements to another canvas and remaking the rest. 

I really like these coasters, and there is not much I would change. One small thing would be making the pot a bit wider, I feel it would give it more stability and balance out the design a bit. I do not have any big plans for these coasters, they are currently residing in my room on my desk. I might put them in the kitchen or the dining table as decoration.





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