I need a iPad stand holder, so I decided to use acrylic sheet and make it by laser cutter. But things are not easy.

These are my sketches. At first, I designed this iPad stand holder by just using one piece of acrylic.

This is the outline in illustrator. The left picture shows my way to estimate the approximate length of each part. Since there are two bend areas, I think it’s difficult and unnecessary to make accurate calculate.

My difficulty is about the bend part. The first one was broken, because the cutting pattern of lattice hinges were not appropriate. Since the radius of bend depends on the length of the cuts, the distance between them and the thickness of the material. I made a improvement of the spring length and width. The second one turns out to be more flexible.

Then I use acrylic bender to bend other parts. Consider that the neck of the rabbit has to bend more than 90 degrees, I’m afraid of breaking again. So the acrylic bender also helped me to bend it over 90 degrees. Since it’s still flexible, it won’t lose its function of adjusting the angle.

Lattice hinges rely on torsion of the material to bend. From this experiment ( I would like to call it experiment, because the final product is not perfect, but I really learnt a lot from failure), I think acrylic may be not a good choice for this harsh angle. Next time I will try wood material to test the flexibility.