After much foot dragging at last I got a 3D hippo model laser cut. At a TechShop visit I learned a speedy path from a car designing fellow named Ryan I leaned how:
Thingieverse
123D Design
By going to those two websites free 3D models can be had but they are usually for 3D printers and not sized for cardboard scale laser cutting. So with a bit of tweaking and alot of asistantce from my partner we got a few done last night. The big victory after the jigsaw puzzle complexity of assembly was understanding the importance of thickness of material and cutting line and how that impacts the form. Basically the smaller hippo is a bit to elongated and less hippo accurate. The second larger version is nicely detailed but we learned the direction of the planks all should be north to south and putting a few east to west we found the transparency is ruined by the “cross grain” of the coorigation. Lots of fun to be successful. Huge learning curves to make our own forms, but up for the challenge.
