In IDEA we used the Illustrator app. The Illustrator app gives someone the ability to create 2D drawing and bring them to life. But rather than it creating a 3D print of something, Illustrator serves the purpose of engraving and cutting out objects, such as engraving something onto a water bottle, or creating your very own key chain. The Illustrator project that we had done was creating a key chain on the Illustrator app and later using a laser to bring it to life. The steps to creating the key chain on Illustrator Begins with creating the outer region of the key chain by making the border with the rectangle tool and the small hole with the circle tool, it is also require to make them red so they will be cut out. Then inserting the image and my initials onto the key chain.
Now that I have finished creating my key chain within the Illustrator app it is now time to begin bringing it to life with the laser. first, I save the file onto my flash drive and head to the innovation center. Next I plug my flash drive into the computer that the laser is connected to, open my Illustrator file, and hit print. I then open up the UCP and chose my material, then click finish and I now am ready to begin.
I now set my material in the Laser and put the laser on the material. Then i hit start.
The Laser begins engraving and cutting out the key chain, and I am left with the final product.
When working on Illustrator, we were also introduced to the Vinyl cutter which is used with Illustrator. The Vinyl cutter allows the Illustrator app to cut out words onto a decal.
Once the decal is printed off and peeled out is it ready to be placed on to the notebook. The decal is put onto a piece of tape and squeegeed onto it using the squeegee tool. the tape is then put on the book and the decal is squeegeed onto the book.
After using the squeegee to put my decal on my notebook, and using the dental tools to weed out unneeded material I am left with the final result.
What I had learned when using Illustrator was how to create a decal, and how to engrave and cut out designs using a laser. I learned that creating the key chain itself is quite simple, however the laser printing can be complicated when trying to align the laser with the material you had placed inside it. Another interesting thing that I learned in the unit was that Illustrator is not used for only a laser format, but can also be used to create decals using a vinyl cutter. Overall I enjoyed the unit and will hopefully be able to use these abilities later in life.