Biscuit Cutters

Some idea's for shapes for the biscuit cutters..

Doing research into biscuit cutters I found that it's quite simple to make your own cutters. Copper, aluminum and metal ribbon can be used as long as it hasn't had any chemical treatment it is fine to use with food.

I found this page on a website that goes through the process of making your own biscuit cutters and what materials are needed: http://whatscookingamerica.net/PegW/CookieCutters.htm

At the cookery store in the byram arcade biscuit cutters were sold for £1.20 each or £4.99 for a set

Jewerly Tree

This is on possible design for the Jewerly Tree. This will be lazer cut out of 6mm Acrylic and use two cutings that will interlock .

Some Scans from Handmade Graphics Book...

These are a few pages from a book called Handmade Graphics by Anna Wray. Thought they could be useful when looking at printing techniques.

Prototype/Product Pricing

We went on a hunt around Huddersfield to find out prices for various materials or craft products that we need to use on our project.

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We went to find out some prices for the card for our gift cards that we are producing. We found out that in our local stationary shop, A1 Stationary, you can buy an A6 ready folded card for 18p, or 20p if it's metalic or glossy. Bargain!

Envelopes for the cards are also very cheap at only 15p per envelope.

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Also when in A1 stationary, we asked about the prices and suitability of inks to print on various materials.

We were told that for wood blocking, screen printing ink would be best suited, which costs £6 for a tube of about 350ml.

For decorating the matte plates, or canvas', or for the front of the sketchbooks, we were told that using acrylic inks would be best, and these cost around £3 for about 100ml.

We were also told that if the plates we were going to decorate on had a gloss to them, then using glass painting inks would be best and then after we would have to re-varnish the plates. The shop does not sell glass painting inks so we could not get a price.

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For our gift wrap we went to the university print bureau to find out the best paper to use and how much this would cost.

The paper they said would be suitable is what they call "CAD plotter paper" its a thin paper, about 80gsm, and the cost is £3 per metre for a print.

We also had the thought to print on brown paper for our gift wrap, we found a roll of 600cm x 50cm for 67p in Wilkinsons!!!

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Below are some prices that we found for various canvas' which we could use to design upon. These are as follows:

Wilkinsons: £2.50 for 1 x A4

Home Bargains: £1.00 for 1 x A4

The Works: £9.99 for 4 x 40mm x 50mm

We think the option from the works is the best as we would be getting a good quality canvas, and 4 of them for £9.99.

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Below is something that we came across by chance which is a heart shaped, what seems to be, jewellery box. We really liked this idea as we could laser cut designs onto the top of the box. We could also tie this in with the jewellery tree seeing as they are both jewellery related.

Just £2 from Wilkinsons.

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Possible Options for Garden Set: Below are two sets of trowels & fork for a garden set that we came across whilst looking for a few ideas in Wilkinsons.

Trowel: £4

Fork: £4
Trowel: £1

Fork: £1

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Possible Options for Sharing Platter: Below are some plates and bowls that we found that would be ideal to make a sharing platter out of. We haven't quite figured out how to attach them together yet, but the option to make a groove in the plate where the dish fits seem to be the most likely right now.

Dark Brown: Bowl £1.75

Plate £1.75

Biege: Bowl £1.75

Plate £1.75

White: Bowl £1

Plate £3

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Below are the prices we found in Wickes for some timber board of various sizes which we may use for our Jewellery Tree and our Woodland Creature Ornaments. We still need to find out prices for other hardwoods that are available.

(width x height x depth)

Point of Sale Display

For our Point of Sale Display for our sketchbooks, we were thinking of doing something simple, yet effective in its purpose.

The image below shows a rough idea of how we would like to design our POSD, yet we may make some modifications to the design.

We were thinking that the POSD, would be made out of card, possibly corrugated, to give it some strength when holding the sketchbooks. Also, corrugated card would be rather cheap to use, the only minor problem we have with that material, is figuring out how to print upon it.

Image from: http://www.saundersdisplays.co.uk/

Material Pricing for Laser Cutting & Printing

Laser Cutting:

MDF 4mm

900 x 600 approx A1: £4.00

MDF 6mm

900 x 600 approx A1: £6.00

Acrylic 3mm

900 x 600 approx A1: £16.00

Acrylic 6mm

900 x 600 approx A1: £25.00

Styrene 1.5mm

900 x 600 approx A1: £8.00

Styrene 3mm

900 x 600 approx A1: £16.00

Clear Polypropylene

1020 x 720: £5.00

Printing:

CAD Plotter Paper; £3 per metre

Laser Cutting Information for Wood & Plastic

Laser cutting information for wood

Maximum Component Size	3000x1500mm (but usually limited by sheet size of 2440x1220mm)
Minimum Component Size	Very Small - depends on material thickness
Maximum Thickness	Around 25mm
Minimum Thickness	<0.8mm
Minimum Detail	Detail should not usually be less than 30% of the material thickness e.g. minimum 3mm diameter hole in 9mm thick material
General Cutting Tolerance	>6mm - +/-0.1mm 6-12mm - +/-0.2mm >12mm - +/-0.3mm
Effects of Thermal Cutting	Because these are organic materials the cut edge charsand is covered with carbon - the thicker the material the more pronounced the effect.
Common Grades Stocked	Most grades and finishes are available - waterproof, fire resistant, vennered etc. are usually available in most thicknesses.
Common Sheet Sizes	2440x1220mm; Occasionally 3000x1500mm
Common Applications	Decorative Panels, Exhibition / Theatre Sets, Stencils, Restoration, Engineered Components and just about everything else!

Informations for laser cutting Plastic

Maximum Component Size	3000x1500mm
Minimum Component Size	Very Small - depends on material thickness
Maximum Thickness	25mm Acrylic, others - please ask (it really varies!)
Minimum Thickness	<0.5mm
Minimum Detail	Detail can usually be around 10% of material thickness, but this does vary with the type of plastic.
General Cutting Tolerance	>3mm - +/-0.1mm 3-15mm - +/-0.2mm >15mm - +/-0.3mm
Effects of Thermal Cutting	Cut edge quality varies by type, but on the whole is excellent. There can be stress raisers formed in the cut edge with certain materials.
Common Grades Stocked	Polypropylene, Polycarbonate, Nylon, LDPE / HDPE, Mylar. Brand Names include - Perspex, Plexiglas, Irpen, Policril, Lucite, Zotefoam, Repsol, Altuglas, Priplak, Lexan, Medite
Common Sheet Sizes	2000x1500mm, 3000x1000m
Common Applications	Sign, Display, Decorative Panels, Point-of-sale, Promotional Items, Jewellery - the list goes on!

Good woods to use are solid brown oak, walnut, oak, mahogany and maple basically hardwood.

We need to go into the tech building and see in they could order us some wood in from there timber yard.

Apparently all plastic is fine to be laser cut

Product Research

In are meetings we decided to focus on producing eight main products including the sketch book. These products are :

1. Ornaments

2. Gift wrap

3. Card Prints

4. Jewelry tree

5. Biscuit cutters with cake tin

6. Garden set

7. Canvas Prints

8. Sketch book

We need to find out where we can get these made at low cost, what materials to use, methods to use , How much products out there already sell for so we can work out are profit margins and finally how long they take to manufacture as this would be a time effecting factor as well we need to think about the time of turnaround.