Laser cut Eiffel Tower in Paper

A 22″ tall scale replica of the Eiffel tower cut from paper and assembled without glue or fasteners.

The tower as is constructed of 4 identical pieces cut from a single 18×24 sheet of Plike 122# Bordeaux Cover paper. Despite having removed so much of the paper, it is still stable and durable enough that we don’t worry about handing it around to most of the kids that come through our shop.

To create it, Michael found a scanned copy of the original plans and spent several evenings tracing the structure in Adobe Illustrator. The pieces tab together along each edge. So what we have is an accurate reproduction of the real thing that goes together with no tape, glue or fasteners.  We still have the observation decks to do, but it looks really sharp even without, and it definitely simplifies assembly.

The intricacy of this piece really pushes the boundaries of our Epilog laser. In order to get clean cuts that fine, we have to run it at only 20% its rated speed which causes it to use a different tracking algorithm. This means that the job takes an hour and 20 minutes to run, which makes it difficult to price for sale under our current business model. But it definitely shows what is possible.