Setting Up
I decided to make the beginner box for this assignment, as this was my first ever time using the laser cutter (outside of training of course)! I worked with Rachel Bui as my partner for this assignment. Rachel found a website with a box design we liked (makercase.com), and we used that template to make our vector file. We both used 1/8” wood, and I used 60 speed and 40 power for my raster engraving. On the example wood in the laser cutting room these settings led to some tiny patches of white, but my rastered letters ended up with a clean finish I was very happy with.
Laser Time
The most difficult part of my project was actually cutting out the box on the laser cutter, because I made my box right before the laser cutter was officially declared broken. The student who used the cutter before us advised me that the laser had barely managed to cut through her material, and she recommended slowing down the speed for our vector cuts. About half of the sides popped right out after one cut, but the laser didn’t go all the way through the wood on the others. At the advice of a lab tech, I dropped the speed of the vector cutting to 2 for my final three sides (deleting the completed sides from my vector file beforehand), and recut the same piece of wood. After going over my wood a second time with the laser cutter, another wall popped out, but two still remained partially embedded in the wood. I ran the laser cutter over my material a third time, and it finally cut through enough to allow me to pop the final walls out.
Problems in houston
Unfortunately, using the laser cutter multiple times on the same pieces created some obvious problems. The borders of my parts had worse burning than I otherwise would expect. I also believe running the laser cutter multiple times messed with our kerf, as my pieces fit together fairly loosely. The placement/order of the walls also affected which parts of the box would be loose, likely because only half of my parts had extra kerf.
Nothing to waste
A drawback of the basic box is that it isn’t very practical for actual storage. To make the most of my design, I oriented the parts so that only the bottom panel would be loose and turned it into a dragon’s perch! Now I have a cool new decoration for my room.
