For this project, we were tasked with creating a laser-cut wooden box with our name and college crest. Some advice we got in the project introduction was to keep it simple and easy because there are only 2 laser cutters in the OEDK.
I paired with Alana for this task and we had a few ups and downs.
On 9/21/22, we were ready to make our boxes. Alana has Adobe Illustrator on her computer, so she created our boxes ahead of time. We started off with a 0.005 kerf using MakerCase.
A class peer gave us his settings from his laser cut session right before us (Cutting: 90p, 4s ; Raster; 40p, 40s) and we went ahead and did a test cut.
Our first mishap was that our test cut was huge! I thought I put in a simple 2×2 square into Illustrator, but it ended up being almost 4×4! We also covered this piece with tape beforehand and wrote ‘hello’ on the test square and we quickly realized that the engraving wouldn’t be able to go through the tape well. Since engraving was important and the scorch wasn’t so bad, we decided to forego tape.
Our test cut with a faint “hello”
So, we went ahead and put my box design in and ran it. However, there were a few errors. Because we made it in Illustrator beforehand and then simply copied/pasted it into the Illustrator on the laser lab computer, our originally intended dimensions of 4x4x4 were not saved. Not only that, but the laser seemed to stop at a certain point and we were so confused. With the help of Fernando, we realized that we forgot to put the dimensions of the piece into the printing preferences to ensure that the laser cuts everything we have down.
The Tiny Box Mistake
So, after learning all of this, Alana went and printed her entire box and assembled it. She noticed that the 0.005 kerf made it pretty hard to close – she was using a lot of strength – so I decided to change it to 0.0047 kerf and kept the previous laser settings.
After that adjustment, I cut my box and was able to put it together pretty smoothly!
I’m happy with how it turned out!
Although I do like that only the stroke of my text is shown, giving it a cleaner delicate look – I do wish that I filled in my letters or used a darker piece of wood to get the contrast. Or even used some painters tape and different settings to get that blue color in there like I saw another student do.
Also, Dr.Wettergreen helped me to realize that I used the wrong material width which is why there is some extension of my box fingers.
It’s hard to see on camera, but the extension can be seen here.
Overall, it was definitely a learning experience and I do feel much more comfortable with the laser cutter!
Cost of project:
wood sheet of similar size: $24.98
time: 2 hr @ $10/hr
machine time: rental at $25/hour for 2 hr
Total: $94.98
