Fabrication – Creating Five Repeatable Objects

This week we had to create five repeatable objects and I chose to create wooden tarot cards. I also wanted the chance to use the laser cutter for the first time so I thought using that for the etching would work out well. 

Normally a tarot card deck has 72 cards, so I had to go through my deck and pick out my favorite ones that I wanted to create. These were picked from the Rider-Waite tarot deck, which was originally drawn and published in 1910. Most were chosen from the major arcana and then I added the ace of cups because I really liked the design. I took photos of the five cards I picked and created vector files for them in illustrator. 

Once, those were created I wanted to test them out, so I found a scrap piece of wood and laser cut one etching design on it. I had help from Veronica and a guy at the shop to show me how to use the laser cutter properly. I then used the bandsaw and the sander to cut it down into the shape of a card. And my first pancake was made.

Now, I needed to find actual wood for these cards. I wanted the wood to be as thin as possible. I went to Home Depot, but unfortunately they didn’t have anything I wanted. Tushar was kind enough to give me some of his wood. I used the first machine to the left (I forgot the name of it) that cuts huge pieces of wood. Then I used the bandsaw to cut down the wood into 5 blocks where I would laser cut my tarot etchings. I left enough space to cut the cards down.

Next, I etched each card with a different tarot design.

Once, they were all etched, I measured half an inch space between the edge of where I wanted to cut and the edge of the etching. From making my first pancake, I knew that the bandsaw was really hard to cut accurately with, so I cut near the lines and then sanded the card down to the exact point of where I wanted the card to be cut. 

Overall, I found using the sander to sand down to lines you wanted cut was more accurate than using just the bandsaw. All the cards did not come out the same size (they varied slightly because even the sander was hard to make completely accurate). If I had more time, I would have also wanted to redo my laser etchings. I wished there was more depth to them and they had deeper etchings. Since this was my first time using a lot of these tools, I’m still proud of how they ended up turning out.