Overview

For this assignment, I was tasked with creating a box using the laser cutter. The requirements for the box were that it had to be at least 4” on each side, it had to have both my name and college crest etched onto a side, and it had to fit together without the need for glue. I ended up going for a box which fulfilled these requirements, but I also added different etchings onto the remaining 4 sides. The result was a box that I was pleased with, but that also had a few problems.

Process

The first thing I made sure to do was find the kerf to input into makeabox.io when I created my box. In order to do this, I created a vector file of a single 1 inch square inside another square and measured the discrepancy in size. This would go on to haunt me, which I will touch on later in this post.

After determining the kerf, I found the files that I would be etching onto the box sides. I downloaded my college crest from Canvas, and looked for my other four designs online. 3 of these designs came from the website ‘thenounproject.com’, which allowed me to download the designs as svg. files. These were a cross, a piano, and a guitar. The last design I found was a club crest of my favorite soccer team, Arsenal which was a png I found online on Google Images.

I then went to makeabox.io to create my box. I made my box a cube measuring 5” on each side, and made sure to input the kerf I found earlier. Once this was done, I opened the box in Illustrator and added all the things I intended to etch into the box. After this, it was time to cut the box.

After having cut the 1 inch square for the kerf, I knew that the settings which would work were 3 speed, 100 power, and 10 frequency. Knowing this, all that was left to decide was the raster setting. Using the cutout shown below, I decided that 50 speed and 75 power would be best. I then finally proceeded to cut the box.

Once this was done, all that was left was putting the box together. This is where I encountered some problems. I realized very quickly that the box was an extremely tight fit. This made it very difficult to put the box together, but in the end I was able to make it work with the use of a rubber mallet.

 

Things To Improve

As mentioned before, I had a very difficult time putting together the box because of the tight fit. The reason for this, I believe, was the kerf that I found. Specifically, I believe that I could have done a much better job of finding the kerf. In the assignment doc, there was a file specifically made for measuring kerf, but I figured that creating a 1 inch square would be sufficient. After thinking about potential reasons for the tight fit of the box and talking to a classmate, I realized that had I cut 10 rectangles and measured the average kerf, the resulting value would have been much more accurate than the kerf of the 1 inch square I measured. I believe that had I done this, the box would have been a more reasonable fit. Because of the tight fit that I ended up having, there were some small gaps left in the box itself where I didn’t feel comfortable forcing the box together, out of fear of cracking the wood. Other than this, though, I was very happy with how the box came out. The etchings were of high quality and very distinguishable from the rest of the box, and there did not seem to be many visual defects with the cuts.

Cost Analysis

150 in.^2 of Wood = $2.85

4 hrs of Labor = $30

1 hr of Laser Cutter Usage = $20

Total Cost = $52.85

Conclusion

Overall, I was able to learn a lot about the laser cutter through this assignment. The box wasn’t as well made as I had hoped, but it is still something I am proud of making and I look forward to correcting my mistakes in the future when using the laser cutter.