Laser cut/engraved mementos

Designed some laser cut and engraved keychains for my friends before I finish my undergraduate degree and no longer have access to the lab’s laser cutter T.T. I wanted to make designs representative of their respective degrees.

Here’s a breakdown of the process

Start with key chain idea and sketch in Fusion 360 the outline. Export drawing for CorelDraw to process into vector lines.

Find some images on google that have distinct contrast. Illustrations are best rather than black/white photos for the clean line look I was going for.

One of my friends is a chemistry major focused in plastics so I looked into papers specific to his research, referenced the paper he and his lab made, and pulled a organic compound drawing from it to crop. Up the contrast, extract lines, and bam. Hyper-specific keychain

My girlfriend focuses on ornithology so I had to find one of those naturalist drawings to pull from easily. Line art style so no pre-processing needed

Another one of my friend completes a final project zine as part of her degree, so it felt fitting to convert the prominent icon from it into a design. Since it originates as a colored, watercolor-esc illustration, I had to screencap the image and put it into Clip Studio Paint, which is my preferred drawing software. Apply black and white filter, polarize image into 3 distinct monochrome sections, apply dithering effect based on color like manga. Then export to CorelDraw, laser cutter interprets regions as engraved areas. Came out beautiful.

One friend was very involved in aerospace but I racked my brain to how best to represent that in a unique way vs slapping a rocket body on it. First, download 3d model of jet engine. Dump it into SOLIDWORKS simulation and turn mesh density all the way up. Wait for it to render, do a detail cutaway inside turbine and turn background all the way blindly white. Tweak display settings to show mesh grid and no hidden lines. Screencap, turn contrast up, and convert to vectors in Corel. Laser engraves super thin lines and bam, hyper detailed keychain.

Lastly, I had to make one for myself. I had just finished my senior project so I exported the exploded view of the full assembly. Originally I envisioned led backlight and a tiny frame on the wall but I use it as a cup/mug saucer to this day. Everyone else in my team I made mini replicas of the assembly for them to take home and play with.