Our third project is a rehash of our first project, but this time we get to use laser cutter! I’m actually pretty excited about this, mostly because I think the laser cutter is really useful and it would be really nice to learn how to use. Anyway, I decided to make the beginner box because my Adobe Illustrator skills are pretty lackluster, and found that a simple box maker site would suffice to make my box. The site allows you to make lots of the technical adjustments, like kerf and tab width, while still being super easy to use. It doesn’t have the option to make anything other than a 6 sided box with finger joints holding it together, so I had to delete the sixth side and edit the tops of the other sides to get it right, but it wasn’t anything difficult.

The trouble came when it came time to make a form fitting box though. My first box was made from a really nice black acrylic, but I got the kerf wrong and it wasn’t form fitting at all. I had to go through some trial and error and eventually ended up with the following piece that had the correct kerf and thickness for some wood.

I would always recommend to test kerf and whether the current settings of the laser cutter will cut with a small square piece of wood/acrylic or box, similar to the above, so you don’t go wasting a bunch of wood for something you won’t end up using.

After cutting the full size box out, it was just snap together the pieces and call it a day!