Voronoi Leather Belt : New Textiles 2012

For my Laser Cut Lace project, I decided to laser cut a spiral and grid vornoi diagram into a leather belt . I first produced the spiral pattern using the Processing programming language. I modified some preexisting code so that I had multiple spirals and their size, shape and position varied. I produced the following pattern initially and wanted something similar for my belt:

I then realized that for my belt, I would have to scale down the design so that it would fit the dimensions of the belt. I measured the belt and modified the pattern accordingly by adjusting the size in the code.

This is what the design looked like:

I also decided I wanted to create more than one design so I can laser cut both on the belt to see what looks better. So this is a spiral pattern overlaid on top of a grid pattern:

Once at the laser cutter, I realized I would have to work in pieces because the belt was too long to fit in the laser cutter. Before even starting on the belt, I tested my design on a piece of cardstock to make sure I had the dimensions correctly and that the design turned out how I wanted. I also tested a portion of the design on a piece of scrap leather so that I could determine the correct speed and power settings for the laser cutter. I started the laser cutter with very a very high speed and low power and noticed that it only etched the leather. I then opted to decrease the speed significantly because I knew the leather would need some time to burn away. I adjusted the settings to 10 for speed and 100 for power and ultimately settled on 20 speed and 90 power after testing out a few pieces with the leather.

Test pieces:

Finally I placed the belt in the laser cutter, made sure it was aligned, and started it up. The spiral pattern was going to take up about half the belt. Once this was done, I moved the belt down so that I could continue with the second design and laser cut the grid pattern that is shown above, on the second half of the belt.

Here is a comparison of the design on the cardstock and the result on the belt:

The laser cutter burned through the leather in most places, but there were a few places it did not. This was probably because the belt may have moved a bit while in the laser cutter because it was hard to fit in there. Also in certain areas it was not aligned perfectly so it tried to cut through the part of the belt where there were seams which probably made it harder to cut.

Here is my finished product!