How to Make a Laser Cut Keychain Pendant by Abigail Nair

Creating a laser cut pendant for your keychain is quite an easy and fun with the right knowledge and tools,all though it can take time depending on the design the end results will always out weigh the labor ,to create this pendant for your keychain here's what you'll need:

Laser cutter
Laptop equipped with adobe illustrator
Perspex (or any other material you want your pendant)
a book and pencil
And of course a key chain to hang your pendant on

Safety first: to prevent injury please make sure you take all of the nessacry safety requirements while in the D n T room or around sharp objects,depending on your age you may need supervision but this project involves no sharp or dangerous equipment.

Step 1: Researching Your Design/sketch

Once you have all the nessacry items you can start researching the design you want or start sketching it out for your pendant I chose the drake owl as it has sharp edges and will stand out more, it's best to choose something outlined in black if not any image will do

Step 2: Design Modifications

After you have chosen your photo drag it onto the desktop and then into illustrator and the photo will open up like so,on the top you will se a tab saying object click the tab and press make then expand and rastersize

Step 3: Getting Your Design Laser Cut Ready

After pressing make and expand then rasterising the image repeat the process but first replicate the image by selecting the image and pressing control C then V which will replicate the image drag it over to the side then click on the objects tab at the top and scroll down and click on image trace and click make and then press expand.

Step 4: The Outside Shape of Your Keychain

Now we must choose a shape for our over all keychain e.g,(circular,square or rectangular)boxed shape,I choose the rounded rectangle as it suits the shape of my design the most I did this by clicking the top shape box,after selecting the shape you desire change the stroke by clicking on the hollowed out square(located on the bottom left tab)as seen in the images and change the stroke from black to no fill.proceed to then select the circle tool and go over to the box that you have just outlined your keychain with and proceed to create a smaller circule this hole is for the keychain to go through if there is white in the the middle of the circule simply double click and press delete to remove it.

Step 5: Hollowing Out Your Design

After you have replicated and dragged your image across to the side proceed to delete the white parts from the inside of your design simply by double clicking the white part and pressing command + delete or it won't register into the laser cutter.

Step 6: Final Design Altercations

Now we must change the outline to a bright pink/red in order for the laser cutter to pick it up on the RGB scale as seen in the photos make sure your scales match up to get the most accurate design possible.then after make sure you change the fill of the lines to hairline otherwise it will come out differently to the desired design.

Step 7: Laser Cutting Time

Once you have finished setting up the RGB scales for your laser cutter as seen in the photos then select print to print out your design on the desired material,make sure you do a few test runs on different materials to gauge the size you would like your pendant as you can see in the images the first test run was disappointing due to the size as I was opting for a small sleek keychain pendant but if large pendants are your thing then keep the size but I changed it with a few more test runs and changes I got the size I desired I settled for the clear Perspex and was not disappointed with the results. And there it it your laser cute keychain pendant.

Step 8: Finished Product

And there you go once you've finished simply add the desired keychain to your pendant and you have a laser cut pendant you just finished a laser cut pendant design i kept the last 2 cuts as they were beautiful I hope you had fun during this tutorial and you were just as satisfied with the end product as I was,side note: i was supervised during this entire procedure my a certified D n T worker.