Overview

Over the past week, I worked with Allison to complete a laser-cut, pressure-fit box made of wood. This process has been a roller coaster of troubleshooting and small wins, but ultimately my laser-cut pieces did not come together to fit as a box. Read on to learn why…

Preparation

Prior to entering the laser cutting room, I searched for images that I thought would look nice on my finished box.

Once we were at the OEDK, we were able to select our wood to cut from and start the calculations necessary for the box. We first autofocused the laser with the wood loaded in the machine. We first had to troubleshoot connecting the laser cutter to the computer with lab tech. We then proceeded to create our kerf test file by creating a rectangle divided into 8 pieces using the following settings: speed (13%), power (100%), frequency (10%). Using a caliper, we then measured the length of the 8 pieces together after the cutting was complete and then measured the length of the cavity. The difference of these lengths was then divided by nine to determine the kerf of the box. Using this and the thickness of the wood we were cutting, we were able to input the proper dimensions for our box:

The next step was to test one of the joints to make sure that they did indeed fit. We only cut the edges of two faces to ensure that they would fit tightly enough for the box. Since they ended up being loose, we tried again with the kerf set to 0.005 and this seemed to work on the next test.

The final step was to combine the designs and vectors cuts into one file. Upon loading this into the laser cutting software, I realized the etching and vector cutting were not loading separately. In order to trouble shoot this, I cut the the pieces before engraving the designs in a second separate pass.

laser cutting

The cutting of the pieces were complete using the following settings: speed (13%), power (100%), frequency (10%), and rotated 270 deg to optimize space. These ended up separating from the rest of the wood very well. Without moving the wood at all, the designs for each face were lined up and engraved separately. The settings for engraving were: speed (20%), power(60%), resolution (600).

Assembly

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Unfortunately, after completing the laser cutting and upon many attempt to assemble the box, I came to realize that the template from MakeABox.io did not generate pieces that fit together porperly to create a cube. No more than four faces could be assembled at once. More than five people tried to assemble the box, but I believe that the puzzle was impossible to solve.

Summary

I am definitely disappointed that my box did not come together the way I had anticipated. I will be making a second attempt early this week using a different software to build the template of the cube and run it through the laser cutter again. I learned so much about the process, from the importance of the kerf test to how to troubleshoot the door and other controls of the laser cutter.

In the future, I plan to pick faster speed and higher power settings for the engraving. I also think I may use a higher kerf at 0.006 in order to get a tighter fit in the box joints. I also think that the emblem I used to represent the University of Rochester may have been the root of the issue regarding the vectors and engravings not separating in the software.

The cost of this box is not what it should be becasue realistically it should not take four hours to create this box. For that reason, for the sake of estimating a cost for this piece, I will assume one hour as the time it should take to complete this project and will hopefully do so in that timeframe later this week.

• Time: $20 (1 hr)
• Materials: $3 (plywood)
• Overhead: $20

Total Estimate: $43