I started my box process by measuring the thickness of my 24inx24in piece of wood with a caliper. My piece of wood was 0.182in / 4.65mm.

After measuring, I calibrated the laser and determined the kurf by cutting the given KurfBox.ai file, pressing the pieces closely together, and measuring the distance between the last piece and the border of the file then dividing by 10.

The measured distance on the caliper was 0.0980mm, and divided by 10 that gave me a kurf of 0.0098mm. I inputted this into the makercase website alongside the 4x4x4 in., outside, 0.182in thickness, and closed box settings.

After applying my dimensions in makercase, I copied the template and kept note of which sides were front/back/sides/etc.

For my college, the Martel logo was mostly filled and when I did a sample run I thought it looked really ugly, so I inverted the settings so that none of the logo was filled.

Here is a photo of my trials. At the top row, I got logged out of the laser mid-print so the cutouts didn’t finish. I had to ask a TA to log me in again and then I just made a new row (third row).

These were the raster and vector settings I used.

Once assembled, my box looked like this. It had a bit of burning on the side, so I decided to sand the box a little to remove as much burning as I could. I hand sanded with 120 grit.

This is my final box!! The martel logo looks very nice and my name is nice and dark. Pressing the wood into one another was actually quite difficult but my box is very sturdy.

Aside (issues/ complaints):

• Someone booked the laser from 8:00-8:45 and never showed up. Waste of time. Also, someone else booked the laser from 8:45-11:00!! Very annoying.
• The laser that I was trained on was out of order so I had to use a laser I wasn’t trained on and needed help with that

Cost Analysis:

• I used around half of the 24x24in panel
  • estimation 12x24x0.25in. panel : $10.98
    • Home Depot
• 1 hour on the laser
  • $50-120/hr = (assuming high…) –> $120
• My labor
  • $15/hr = $15
• Sanding
  • $10 for 15 120 grit pads (Home Depot) = $0.67

Total:

$ 146.65