…And we proved them wrong. All you need is a laser cutter and to ruin as much would as possible.
In this project, I (being in the beginner section of the class) was tasked with laser cutting a box such that it would be able to snap into place on its own and hold its shape without any adhesive. Along with making the box, we need our name, the class and date engraved on the box. I also decided to engrave a Texas on one of the sides, as well as a star in the (approximate) location of Dallas, so I could represent my hometown. The first thing I did was go to makeabox.io and create a box with inner dimensions of 5″ and the thickness of the wood I was using (.19″), and a kerf of .007″, as I had seen in other blogs that other students used similar numbers.
The box MakeABox made, as well as my additions
I added a text box to type my name, class, and date. To make Dallas, TX, I took the Texas PDF that we used for the plasma cutting lab and re-purposed it for my use here. Then, after taking a look at a map, did my best to put a star at the location of Dallas. I then decided to do some test cuts, making sure that my kerf was large enough. Thank goodness I did, because I seemed to everything possible to make it seem like I should be allowed to use the laser cutter. In my first failure, I accidentally set my raster and vector speed to be the same (at the vector speed of 6%, both at 100% power), and that was a disaster. My next go round, things went better, I still made mistakes. Firstly, I forgot to adjust my art board, so when I changed the size of my print, it was scaled weirdly such that my 5″ internal box was 8.5″. Also, my vector speed of 6 did an extremely poor job of cutting through the entirety of the wood, but the raster at 40 speed had a beautiful look for my TX (both powers at 100%).
The reasons why I shouldn’t be allowed near a laser cutter.
Once I had stopped making large mistakes, I finally started actually cutting my box. I began by just cutting my Dallas, TX (DTX) side and the side with my name, to make sure the etching was good, as well as make sure my kerf was well adjusted. I cut the sides with a vector speed at 5 (power and raster setting constant), and while name plate came out fine, the Texas side didn’t some out all of the way causing, well…
Forcing the panel off of the main block of wood is unsuccessful
Comparing the end pieces of the first (left) and second Texas plate
I used a nearby xacto knife to to try and clean up the last piece of panel stuck to the wood, but that didn’t work and just messed up a couple of the end pieces. So I reprinted that piece, as well as the other 4 empty walls. This time, I used vector speed of 4, which worked like a charm.
Laser cutter at work
Once the walls finished printing, I sanded the sides to try and get a better feel, as well try the small chars I had (to varying degrees of success).
Final Product
I do believe that this project helped me gain an understanding of the laser cutter, as by the end I was doing blocks of steps with looking at the checklist, and doing them correctly! I knew (hoped?) that I would figure it out eventually.
