PhD Thesis Cover and Statue

When I defended my PhD, I wanted to give something tangible to my committee as a thank you, so I fabricated a physical version of the cover I designed in Blender.

The cover is a set of three linked tori with the title mapped on the surface. I thought about 3D printing, but figured it would be challenging to get the overhanging parts right.

I eventually went with prefab wooden rings that I etched with a laser cutter. The first step: get a digital copy of the wooden rings. This was as simple as measuring the radii and creating a torus in Blender.

The fun part was etching text on a curved surface. I used an orthographic camera to render the scene, which models how the laser cutter ‘views’ the object.

A hot glue gun was enough to link the tori into the final standing statue.