Welcome again to my blog. This week in my prototyping class, I worked with the laser cutter to produce a 4×4 box. This was a very exciting experience because I had used a laser cutter before, but that was back in high school during my robotics class. Back then, I built a logo for a soccer team with the laser cutter, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, after 4 years in college and 1 year in the industry, I had totally forgotten how to use a laser cutter.

Sid and I decided to create our box together so we could support each other in this task. We set out on Friday morning with the goal of finishing our box. We didn’t realize that we needed to use Fabman to schedule the time we were going to work on our box. We thought that by signing up on the Excel sheet, the laser cutter would be ours for two hours. Unfortunately, someone else had reserved the laser cutter for the same time. However, we all took this as an opportunity to help each other tackle this project in the best way possible.

I made my first attempt at laser cutting my box. Initially, I used the box software to create my sketch with an outer dimension of 4×4 and a curve of 0.007. Then, I opened my file in Adobe Illustrator and added symbols of things that represent me. I included logos of Oklahoma, Colombia, Real Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo, and James Rodríguez, representing some of the places and people I grew up admiring. Sadly, my first attempt wasn’t successful because I forgot to deselect the vector cut for my symbols. As a result, the machine engraved my symbols but then cut them out, which was extremely disappointing.

I had to wait for more people to cut their boxes before getting a second try. For my second attempt, I learned how to select just the engraving option for my symbols, which made everything easier. The cutting of my box took 10 minutes, utilizing a cutting speed of 18 and a power of 100. The cut was good, but the fit was a bit tight. With a little help from Pablo and Sid, and the gentle persuasion of a hammer, we managed to put the pieces in place.

In the end, I was very proud of my box. I really like it, and it represents things that mean a lot to me. I hope everyone enjoys crafting this box as much as I did.

Cost Analysis:

Material	Cost	Amount/Hours	Total Cost
1/4 ” Plywood	$10.79	1	$10.79
Prototyping Engineer	$39	1	$39
Logo Designer	$27	1	$27
Lase Cutter	$2.27	1	$2.27
Laser Cutter Operator	$20	1	$20
Total			$99.06