Matthias and me have a mutual friend called Carsten.
Carsten turned 40 and that called for something really special.
In tradition with previous birthday gifts, a self-made packaging is part of the deal.
In this case, the gift is a kite - a two-liner with two sails and tails. The german word for kite is "Drache" which is the same as for dragon.
Since dragons are dangerous, they must be caged.
And since Carsrten turned 40, a cage with 40 bars seemed appropriate.
The dimensions of the rolled-up kite demanded a length of a little more than one meter and a diameter of approximately 20cm.
The active area of my carbon-dioxide laser is 30 by 45cm. This led to a design with an outer diameter of 34cm for the cage.
Using the laser for some of the work has a huge advantage: any form you can draw can be cut.
Disadvantages include the limited choice of materials and the limited strength of the material.
My chinese 60W laser can cut through approximately 5mm of plywood and up to 13mm of Poly(methyl methacrylate). Polystyrene is easier to atomize, so I can cut through a good one centimeter of the stuff.
My chinese laser has another disadvantage. The optics has a fixed focal length of about 10cm and I can get no replacement lenses with longer focal length. As a result, the edges of anything cut with the laser beam are not orthogonal to the surface.
With thin material such as verneer or paper, this is not a problem. But when the material is a few millimetres thick, it is hard, not to notice.
Still, Matthi and me decided to ignore that and went for cutting some 2cm strong parts from expanded Polystyrene as well.
