Fab Butterflys

On the 16th December, Dominic and I were lucky enough to be able to visit the FabLab in Exeter Library which is “an open access, not-for-profit, community resource where anybody can invent and make just about anything”, to learn how to use a range of machines that we will be using to create butterflies for our Arnos Vale Cemetary project!

We brought a range of designs made by the team and chose a variation as we would need to create quite a large number for the project. We were shown a few examples of other work created there in wood and acrylic and then decided to test one of our designs in wood. We were shown the steps of using the machine but then encountered a problem, as we had brought along colourful designs only to find out the machine could only read them in black and white!

Thankfully we were helped by the staff and shown a way of fixing this, and our first test design were born! We were then able to give it a go on a piece of acrylic and the results were really good, we have a little way to go to get them absolutely perfect but considering it was only a test we were really pleased.

We will be returning on the 23rd to learn how to use the vinyl cutter which we may be using to make the wings for the butterflies, so I expect another blog will follow this one! All in all it was a very creative and fun day, thanks to the Fab Lab for having us!

Written by Jake Hooper, Published by Dominic Palfreman