This week, I completed the laser cutting beginner assignment  to create a 4″x4″4″ laser cut cube. My completed product can be seen below.

To start, I tried to find the kerf of the Epilog laser cutter (the older one). To do this, I used the method shown in the handout of cutting 10 lines and measuring the space made. I calculated this to mean  a kerf of 0.0096 inches. I decided to test a few corner joints (more on how they were made later) to make sure that this kerf would work, and eventually settled on a kerf of 0.011 inches. I later realized this was slightly too tight, but it worked alright.

To make the box, I used makerbox.io. I entered the desired parameters for an exterior dimension of 4″ (aka, interior dimension =4″-thickness) for wood of thickness 0.2″ (I measured it with a caliper). I chose 0.75″ for the tabs to have enough tabs, but not an excessive amount. After applying the kerf that I decided I wanted to use, I was ready to go to Illustrator.

In Illustrator, I applied the Duncan crest as well as my information. I also chose to add some things that I’m interested in, like the White Sox and disc golf. I put fragile signs on the top and bottom, because I was concerned that the kerf would be too high and then the tabs would snap when I tried to put the box together.

I set the box sides to a stroke of 0.001″ and the rastered sections to 0.003″ (or so I thought-more on that later). I then taped off the section of the wood that I was cutting to avoid laser burn, and started cutting out the box.

 

 

Things were going smoothly, with 4 out of 6 sides cut. All of a sudden, the laser

moved to the center of the side that would hold the Duncan crest. I was

 confused, as I had chosen vector only for the cut settings. It appeared that the crest had a stroke setting that caused the laser cutter to try to cut out the crest. Oops. It nearly set on fire a few times, but with a careful eye on it I let the cut finish.

I then removed the tape, replaced the pieces into the sheet, and raster the images on each side. I ended up needing to redo the crest side, so I ended up cutting out 5 sides total.

The pieces were a tight fit, but I managed to get them to all snap together with no visible cracking in any of the tabs. Overall, I was happy with the results and with the fit of the sides. If I did it again, I would decrease the kerf used in the box generator to 0.01″.

For the cost analysis, I will assume needing a whole 40×28 plywood sheet ($10 from Lowes). I worked on the project for just over 5 hours (at $7.25 an hour), but a decent amount of that time was waiting for the laser cutter to be available (it was very busy).  Assuming I ran the laser cutter for a full hour with all of the testing and the final product, I will assume operating costs were $20. Therefore, the total cost of this project was just over $66. This project was much less labor intensive than the box project. This makes sense, as it uses newer, fourth industrial revolution technologies rather than older methods.