I wanted to see / feel what 18 paper layers would look & feel like:
That’s a black mask layer atop 16 cut layers of cheerful colored paper in rainbow order and a solid purple sheet at the bottom:
The layer runs at 100 mm/s with 20% of a 60 W laser. The relatively low speed, combined with right-angle corners, produces very crisp results unlike the rounded-corner Subpixel holes.
The holes form a 16×16 grid and cutting the first few layers with 250-ish holes takes a bit under three minutes apiece:
The sheets sit in the Letter sheet fixture and get four round holes in the corners for the assembly fixture, plus a binary sheet ID helping me with the stacking order:
The hole patterns come from Inkscape through LightBurn, in a grindingly intricate manual process crying out for automation. This is a feasibility study to see if the result is worthwhile and, yeah, it looks promising. More about all that later.
If someone had asked Young Me what I’d be doing in half a century, dabbing colored paper with a glue stick would not have been one of my choices and not just because glue sticks hadn’t been invented back then.
Another couple of years and I’ll be ready for the Activity Room at the Olde Folkes Home.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
6 responses to “Layered Paper: Random Blocks”
Please let us know if you find an old folks home with an activity room that is stocked with a 3D printer, laser cutter and other necessary tools. If you can find one I think you’ll have lots of company from your distribution list!
I’ve heard rumors of a Masonic Village in Pennsylvania with a narrow-gauge steam train layout around the grounds, but we would not fit into their social groups. Other than that, a wood shop is about as good as we’ve ever seen. I suppose filling a shop with all my tools would Expose Them To Liability …
[…] random block layered paper design starts as an Inkscape layout, although the amount of manual intervention required to make it happen […]
I am inspired. I though I’d use this: https://a.co/d/8OuETW1
Astrobrights is really nice paper!
After working out the Inkscape layers, maybe I can do another wall hanging without rage-quitting …
[…] The next step involves creating a corresponding set of LightBurn layouts to burn those holes out of colored paper sheets to produce layered paper art: […]