Test cut

Me, Jordan and Nathan decided that we should do a test print of our symbols onto a small piece of acrylic to test the minimum stroke thickness that would use in the designing of our symbols. two factors affect the decision of this. Firstly, thinner lines are more brittle. We want the stencils to be durable. Secondly, we need to be able to actually use these stencils with a piece of chalk or a pen. We each took one of our most complicated stencil ideas that we had designed as we felt this would be a good true test for the stencils.

We decided that the 6mm plastic is actually really strong. However, the problem is that our symbols for stencils are causing issues. They are just too complicated and need to be simplified. This isnt a problem, we just need to reduce the form of the most complicated ones to simpler shapes. We determined a minimum stroke thickness for any line. This was 6mm. This was determined by measuring the thickness of a whiteboard pen. Bath uni are struggling to find a blackboard so we have come up with a whiteboard marker instead. We brought a standard whiteboard marker from the uni shop and measured the nib. It was around 4.5mm in diameter so we have determined that if all lines are a minimum stroke of 6mm then the pen will easily be able to draw through the stencil. With these alterations in mind we started editing the symbols to create finals.