Today has been successful for me. Last night I had put three sheets of sandblasted test pieces in the kiln to tack fuse together to see how they would react. They are still at a fairly high temperature so I couldn’t get them out, but I decided after the problems I began to have with the PVA glue starting to flake off when sandblasting, that I would have to come up with a better way of adding a resist. The black tape which we usually use is the best resist, but as I want a really accurate image applied with neat edges, I would have to rely of my drawing skills onto the tape, and my craft knife cutting skills to be excellent which I am not confident about.
I decided to look into getting the tape laser cut while attached to the glass so that I could then peel away the areas I wanted. As I have already had my Photoshop images ready (and printed yesterday) and they are at the correct scale, all I needed to know was how to translate them into a compatible file for the laser cutter, so I went to speak to Jim on the second floor for some technical advice. He made time to run through it with me, and then I went away and produce the images I needed.
I had left a note for Sara with a cutting list for float glass for my final pieces which she cut out for me today. I had to edge them on the belt linisher so they are ready to cover in black tape for the laser cutter. Once I have added the tape tomorrow, I will take them up to Tom Hand on the fourth floor who is in charge of the laser cutter in the plastics workshop to try to fit it in with the large number of students who are currently cutting out a number of different sheets for their own work. It is a very busy time for him up there now!
So I have learnt how to change my Photoshop file into a TIFF file for importing into CorelDraw, changing the image by getting the image traced by the programme automatically, then removing the fill and adding a hairline outline to produce the vector line for the laser to follow. I am also prepared for tomorrows action plan for that module.