Hello, this week I made a display case for future projects in Engi210. Whenever I first started thinking about the design, I knew I wanted to do drawers, but wasn’t sure about the rest. I played around with the different dimensions we were given for the boxes and decided to do three drawers for the larger pieces. I wanted to do a side drawer, and got some inspiration from a kitchen drawer. I wasn’t sure about what do for the smaller boxes, except I thought it would be pretty cool if it was movable. This led me to making the display case pretty complex, as I decided to do a rotating design on top of the drawers. This is the finished product. 
First, I tested different kerf settings and messed with the amount of teeth for the board.
I decided on .225 millimeter kerf and that the more teeth, the better for the box to stay together. With this information, I made my design. I made a cardboard prototype of the outer frame.
It worked pretty well, so I moved on to cutting actual wood. Before I cut the wood, I put blue tape over the places where the laser would cut. Unfortunately, I didn’t tape both sides and realized it too late, so some of the box is slightly burnt. Here is me putting it together.
Next I cut the drawers. They didn’t fit. I realized I had not accounted for the thickness of the wood when making the drawers.
I remade them and it fit! I decided to use acrylic for the front of the boxes so that future designs could be seen slightly and I engraved the names of the future designs.
Next, came the rotating top. I put a .25 inch dowel through a box on top of the frame and designed it so the other boxes would be attached to a circle that would spin. I also put a circle of acrylic under the wood circle, so that it would spin with less friction.
Lastly, I sanded the box.
This is the display case.
I will now calculate how much I think it would cost to make. I used a sheet of 30×20 in. 1/4 in. thick Plywood. A 4×8 ft 1/4 in. thick sheet of Plywood at Home Depot costs $21.12, so $2.75. I used about 16 square inches of 1/4 in. thick acrylic. A 4×8 1/4 in. thick sheet of acrylic at Home Depot costs $118, so $4.10.
As for machine time and cost of labor, the machine time usage for the laser cutter can be calculated by the cost of a membership for a workshop.The membership for a laser cutter is $120 per month. This equates to about $3.43 per hour. I used the laser cutter for about four hours, so $13.72. Lastly, since I made a custom box that I think is pretty cool, I would pay myself $50 an hour. I worked on the design and laser cutting for about 12 hours, so $600.
All together, my display case costs $620.57.
A special thanks to an OEDK lab tech who cleaned the laser cutter lens.
