For my box, I knew that we had two sides that were required: the school loge (my GSA logo) and the student information side. Personally, I didn’t really want to put these on the box, but I did for the requirement. To spice up my student information side, I added some line art of a flower that I found online. For the rest of the box, I decided that I would put 2 of my interests (guitar and chess) and then the rest would be themed like Calvin and Hobbes (top and bottom of my box are cute Calvin and Hobbes themes), a cartoon that I enjoyed reading when I was younger. Below I list all of the vector designs for the images on the box.
Before the cutting of the box project, it should be noted that I had completed the name tag. I liked my name tag settings, so I kept the settings for the box the same. These settings were as follows
raster: 40 speed 40 power
vector: 7 speed, 100 power, 10 frequency.
Additionally, before any cutting, I did a kerf test, with 10 strips of wood equally spaced across 4 inches. This test provided that my kerf was somewhere in the ball park of .18/10 inches (there is more to this later, basically this is my first mistake, I talk about this later).
(*Note: This photo was taken when I redid the test, I’m not holding the tension so it is a little smaller. The caliper should read .13XX inches)
Designing in Illustrator:
To design the box, I downloaded the box file from makercase with all of my settings and then I added the photos I had chosen to the file in adobe illustrator.
Cutting:
I raster nice images on it first (the laser cutter raster prior to cutting) and wow, it looks good. I cut and then… the walls look big. Turns out, they’re too big. Well, what happened? I’m absolutely baffled. I thought that I did everything right but my box just didn’t line up, the sides were huge. I go to my image of the box, I must check the box. Well, the sides look too big in illustrator and I just missed it, so what went wrong?!? Oh… my kerf was .18 inches, I didn’t divide correctly the 10 because I thought the caliper read 1.8 inches, not .18 inches. Okay, that’s fine. Instead of tossing the box into the trash, I line up the box pieces in the wood and recut the box with a different kerf template. Luckily the .18 template of the kerf box fits within the 1.8 template of the box perfectly, so it’s as easy as recutting. Great!! I cut the box and… it doesn’t fit again!!! HOW DOES IT NOT FIT? It’s close but it barely doesn’t squeeze together. At this point, I am frustrated and I’m ready to give up for the day. My mistake is now going to require a lot of fixes, either sanding every joint leading to a poor overall look, or for me to reprint. Not another print, I don’t want to sit through this. Okay, so now I go to Dr. Wettergreen, show him the box (that almost fits) and ask him what I should do. What guidance will he give me? A complete recut. He advises a complete recut. Coming from someone more experienced, I cut my losses and I go for a complete recut… shoot. Alongside this, Dr. Wettergreen advices that I actually test my kerf this time, that I move up in kerf and try to find a fit for the box fingers that work. This is good advice, because I am a little frustrated on my current progress. Literal hours wasted, where I could’ve just done a test cut. I repull out my kerf test and I measure again, I want to make sure this wasn’t a silly mistake. It was a silly mistake. Again, I can’t read or something because the kerf test calibration reads 1.3 inches… not 1.8 inches. I’m not going to take a chance this time, so I decide to do these small test cuts of the fingers, moving up in kerf of .007 inches to .013 inches. I will not print another full box and ruin my progress. Okay, I am going to figure this out. As expected, many of the finger joints do not fit at all, they are too loose. However, 0.013 inches creates a perfect fit, who would have guessed? Now I started to cut my box. The piece of wood that I was cutting had a lot of other cuts on it, so I stopped the cut (when two images were 1/2 rastered) and decided no more errors. To make sure that my box didn’t overlap with the other pieces, I decided that I would cut out a rectangle to encompass the box now all that I had to do was a regular print. The rectangle would cover where I was going to put the pieces prior to putting them there. I was just checking if my pieces were going to fit within the size. I cut the rectangle most of the way out, so that it wouldn’t fall through. Yes this may have made the wood lean in a certain angle, I didn’t really plan for this but it’s fine because I cut the print prior to the wood falling. My thought process was, if the wood falls through then the focal angle of the wood is slightly messed up. This would be yet another error. Once I cut out part of the rectangle, I cut out the pieces of the box. Everything fit really well. Only two more pieces. Before cutting these, I used the same technique (cutting a rectangle) to make sure the final pieces of the box would fit. Then I cut the pieces. All of my pieces looked quite well. Yes, there was some burn on the pieces, to be expected from LARGE rasters on the pieces where the laser traced out regions. I would figure this out later. For now, everything looked fine. I cleaned up for the day and I was finished for that day. I went home happy. My box actually fit snug.
Here is the box cutout from the other box that was far too big. I was able to fit the second cut inside the first, however, it still didn’t fit.
Below is the box that didn’t fit. All of the sides printed well, aside from the nearly fitted measurements.
The corner fitting tests are shown below, where the successful prints are the last 2 on the bottom.
The rectangle cutout around the pieces
The pre sanded box is below with all the sides.
Below is the clean workspace once the laser cutter was cleaned up.
The burned sections. I came back the next day and I wanted to fix them. I was deciding on water and a paper towel or maybe sand paper for the burned sections. My whole issue with water was that I didn’t want it to spread around the rest of the section of the box. I didn’t want to move around burn makes. The same issue was present with the 180 sand paper (and the wood shards) but I felt I could control the sand paper more. For this reason, I chose the sand paper. I didn’t want to over sand. There were only two sides that really bothered me: the chess pieces and the guitar logo. I wanted to clean these up while leaving the legibility of the art. With 1080 grit sand paper, I lightly rubbed some burned sections, it looked great. Than I got a little greedy. Hopefully you won’t notice but I also sanded the top of the box, because there was such a small burn mark transferred from the ash on my hand to the box. In my opinion, this didn’t need to be done, but once I finished, the box was done :). This is the story behind my box.
Sandpaper I used
Sandpaper cleaned up
The sides of the box
The finished box is shown below
In the future, there are a few things that I think I could do to improve this box. Mainly speaking, I think I could’ve used painters tape to reduce the burn. Additionally, I found all of my artwork on good old Google, so creating custom artwork for the box would’ve been a lot more interesting to look at. Lastly, I would have liked to done a clear coat on the box at the end of everything, bcause it will be touched by myself and others. The Last thing I want to not is that maybe, in the cuture, I will cut a hole in the top panel of the box to hold pencils. Functionality is key.
Breaking down my cost.
| Cost Type | Cost | Price | Source | Quantity | Total |
| Materials | Board | $5/board | OEDK | 1 board | $5 |
| 180 Sand Paper | $13.79/7sandpaperpack | https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=DChcSEwiS3_Ob7_qIAxVubn8AHXTSI-AYABAQGgJvYQ&co=1&ase=2&gclid=Cj0KCQjw6oi4BhD1ARIsAL6pox2jG3zcW1wLgTPyvFizjzzv21yaaN8DAqybacLPrInRTYK-sF4UFXEaAvK0EALw_wcB&ei=5xcDZ6yaC42Dp84P2YjvyAM&sig=AOD64_0GBIL1MSXXyTZdzY9zCPQT9RCOBQ&ctype=5&q=&nis=4&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwjsqe2b7_qIAxWNwckDHVnEGzkQ9aACKAB6BAgIEBA&adurl= | 1 sandpaper | ||
| Labor | Prototyping Engineer | $29.90/hr | https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Prototype-Engineer-Salary
|
4 hours | |
| Artists | $10 per image | 4 images | $40 | ||
| Overhead | Facility Cost (Machine Time) | Free (at the library) | https://hcpl.net/laser-cutting/ | 4 hours | |
| Quality Control | $17.55/hour | https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Qa-Engineer-Salary#Hourly | 30 minutes | ||
| Misc. | Waste and Scrap | 18.57/hr | https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Garbage_Man/Hourly_Rate | 30 minutes |
The total cost of the box ends up being (5+13.79+29.90*4+40+17.55*.5+18.57*.5 +13.79/7=) $198.42. This is the cost after cutting corners too and using free facilities. Basically, this is a really unrealistic and inflated price. I think a more fair price is to charge for the hours I worked times the salary I want to be paid (per hour) which lets say is $20 an hour. After worked 5 hours, the box would be $100. Well, I am not a skilled craftsman. This is what that number tells me. Now, let’s think if this was in a Target, how much would it cost? I would charge $5 to $15. You could push that upper $15 range if the box was functional but it isn’t. This is something to consider for future iterations. Generally speaking, the cost is highly inflated by the poor craftmanship. If I made a few more, I think I could made 1 box every 50 minutes. This would give me time to print the box (~30 minutes) and time to finish it, then clean up. All of this in mind, I think the box would cost about $15. If I really wanted to push margins, again, I could add functionality to the box, maybe even make it an “Assemble Yourself Product”. In this instance, maybe I could charge something like $20. Lastly, the $20 per box would cover the cost of my wood and sand paper. So after one box, I can cut probably 4-5 boxes from one sheet. My profit, here, becomes considerable. All and all, I would aim to get the cost much lower and optimize my building process, if I was selling the box.
