Hello everyone, I’m back again with another prototyping project. This time, my classmates and I were tasked with creating a laser-cut box. For this, my partner in prototyping was the fabulous Santiago. We completed our training early on the previous week at 8 a.m. and scheduled our laser cutting to take place from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on September 22nd. After showing up, we grabbed a piece of wood from the ENGI 210 table and measured the thickness of the wood using a caliper. We came to a value of 0.2 inches for the thickness, which meant that the appropriate kerf would be 0.007 inches. After Santiago finished his box, I started the individual design process of my box.

First, I created a box file from the box website and downloaded the .svg file. After this, I started my design process of adding my information along with 5 pictures that I got from the Noun Project. These were UT Austin, my alma mater; cricket, one of my favorite sports; the New Orleans Saints, my favorite football team; India, the country my parents are from; and League of Legends, my favorite video game. Sizing these logos and putting them on the file was a bit tedious, as some pictures were much larger than others and others had to be copied and pasted all together since the .svg file came in components, like the India flag circle.

After this, I set everything to cut and engrave. I had to be careful with this process as I had to make sure that the logos and my information were not cut out and engraved instead. This meant that I had to turn off certain steps in the print command that had the individual logos being cut out. After setting my specific settings for speed and power, I began my first cut. However, there was a problem. My settings for speed and power had not registered, and all settings were set at 50 for this print. This meant that while the engraving was working out, the cutting of the individual tiles was not happening. At the end of this print, the box had been engraved with the logos but wasn’t cut out. Because of this, I had to run another print at 18 speed this time instead of 50. This caused there to be slight burn marks that came up on my box’s edges, but the cutting was not off-centered due to the multiple attempts.

After this, I had to press fit my box together. It was a very tight fit, but after pressing most of the edges together, I used a hammer to make sure that the pieces were fully aligned together. One piece of the edge of the box got a little chipped, but other than that, assembling these sides together was rewarding and fairly simple.

Cost Analysis

Material	Cost	Source	Quantity	Total
1/4” 12×20 wood plank	$7.70	Wood Plank	–	$7.70
Lab Technician	$21.01/hr	Lab Technician	1.5 hours	$31.52
Machine Usage	$619/month	Machine Usage	20 mins	$0.27
Total				$39.49