Overview

After a failed kerf test and a lot of laser cutter troubleshooting, Haley and I thought are laser cutting woes were over… until we tried to put our boxes together.

Kerf Test 

We started out by doing a kerf test using a rectangle divided into 8 rectangles. We cut them out, pressed all the rectangles to one side of the slot, and measured the gap. Then, we divided the size of the gap by 9, giving us a kerf of 0.0034 inches.

Generating the Box

We used makeabox.io to generate our box. We used a Width, Height, and Depth of 4 inches, a tab width of 0.4 inches, and a kerf of 0.0034 inches.

Testing the Kerf 

Before cutting out the entire box, we tested the fit by cutting out two joint sections. The fit was incredibly loose, indicating a need to increase the kerf.

Re-generating the Box 

I remade my box template using a 0.006 kerf, retested it, and the pressure fit was perfect.

Laser Cutting the Box 

For my etched design on the box, I got flowers from the Noun Project for 5 of the sides and put the Rice seal and some text on the 6th side. To cut the box, I used 13% speed, 100% power, and 10% frequency. For the etchings, I used 10% speed, 40% power, and 600 resolution. Cutting and etching this took the laser cutter about 54 minutes, which was due to the low speed I chose for my etching. I definitely would have chosen different settings for my etchings had I realized beforehand how inefficient the ones I picked would be.

Putting It Together

This is when things really began to fall apart. I was able to assemble five sides of my box, but the sixth side is not compatible with my assembled pieces. The sixth side, which is the bottom of my box, has too many tabs on two of its sides. I think, had the top and bottom both been identical, the box would have been successful, but alas, they were different. Above is a picture where, thanks to some good camera angling, you almost can’t tell it’s not a complete box. Below are some pictures of my sixth side not fitting onto my box:

Cost Analysis

Labor: 4 hours @ $20/hr = $80

Materials: $5

Laser cutter usage: 4 hours @ $20/hr = $80

Total Cost: $165

Take-Aways

Overall, I would not say my box is worth $165. I enjoyed designing the etchings, but ultimately the inability to assemble it due to errors in the template were the downfall of this project. I hope to have more success with the laser cutter in the future because I do find it to be a very handy prototyping tool! I plan to redo my box in a different box generator this week.