I was really excited about this project! I’ve seen laser cutting videos before and have always wanted to try it out. I decided to do a Naruto inspired wooden box for this project. I’ve been watching Naruto ever since I was young and I thought it would be so cool for me to make a custom item that I could display in my home. Before coming to my scheduled laser time, I did some research to decide what I wanted to etch onto my box. I decided to do a combination of village symbols and clan symbols.

Once I got to my scheduled laser cutting session, I used the makeabox.io website in order to create the box template needed. This was where I made Mistake #1, without accounting for the thickness of my wood, I entered all of my box dimensions to be 4″ instead of 3.7″. This mistake will become important later. I set my tab width to 0.513″ and my kerf dimensions to 0.007″ as I had discussed with other students in BIOE 677 that this kerf dimension resulted in the best fit.

Once the template was made, I uploaded it onto the Laser Cutting template on Adobe Illustrator. I found all of my Naruto symbols online and uploaded them onto my box faces. At this point, I made Mistake #2 because I didn’t account for images that had to be turned 90 degrees on the box face in order to appear upright when the box was assembled.

Now that all of the box faces and symbols had been inserted into Adobe Illustrator, I decided to do a test etch and cut so that I could find the best settings to do either. I found a useful trick was to hide certain images so that I wouldn’t have to manually delete/reenter the images. I decided to do a test etch on the Akatsuki symbol because it required the most etching. Before doing my cut, I used the Jog/Focus options on the laser cutter to find a home placement for the laser. I used the blue focus tool to help me with the Z-axis placement.

My raster settings are as follows: Power: 60, Speed: 80. I chose these settings based on the Speed vs. Power chart in the Laser Cutting room. I was satisfied with these settings and continued to do a test cut. My vector settings are as follows: Frequency: 10, Speed: 6, Power: 80. I chose these settings based on the CO2 Laser Suggested Material Settings table and did some small tweaks– I decided on a speed of 6 to just slightly increase the time it would take for the laser to cut, I figured if the laser went slightly faster, then there would be less burn marks. I decided on a power of 80 also lessen the chance of burning. I was satisfied with these settings after testing them.

It was finally time to etch/cut my box. I decided to etch my box first with all of the symbols and then proceed with the cut. The etch time for all of my symbols took about 15 minutes.

Next time, I’m going to place the images/box faces closer together on Adobe Illustrator to decrease the travel distance of the laser. After the etches were done, I use blue masking tape to go over the etches and prevent burn marks when the laser had to cut the box faces. I made Mistake #3 at this point because I didn’t cover a corner of one of my boxes and it ended up getting a little burn.

The cut time was 3 minutes. I had to do another cut session for 3 of the box faces that didn’t cut all the way through. After the cuts where done, I removed my pieces and the wood plank.

I sanded the areas that got a little burnt and started to assemble the box. I was honestly really happy with the way the symbols looked and proud of myself for not getting too many burn marks. While assembling in class, Dr. Wettergreen pointed out that my finger joints didn’t match up quite all the way which was due to Mistake #1. This made it a little harder for me to assemble the pieces together. Dr. Wettergreen assisted me on inserting the final piece of my box by using the body of a box cutter to hammer the piece down. After exerting a bit of elbow grease, my box was complete!

Cost Analysis 

Materials
Wood: 6 pcs of 4×4″ @$18.99 (1/4x24x48″) = $1.58

Labor
Laser Cutting: 1hr @$20/hr = $20.00
Overhead: 0.5hr @$15/hr = $7.50
Labor: 2 hr @$7.25/hr = $14.50

Total: $43.58