This week, our task was to laser a press-fit box. I was pretty confident going into this – I worked with a laser during an internship this past spring, where I spent hours refining cuts, troubleshooting and cleaning the equipment, and cutting shapes. This was not what I expected.

Designing the box

When I had used a laser previously, we used a software that came with it to process the images for cutting. It was very intuitive, since it’s sole function was for laser pre-processing. So I had never used Illustrator for this, or for anything really. Initially, my plan was to have my name, the Rice seal, and perhaps the seal for UMD. Jhalak and I were scheduled to cut in the first days after the assignment was assigned, but we weren’t able to fit the test box pieces together. We were using MakerCase to develop the box shapes, but the tabs were coming up short – they weren’t fitting the female tab hole all the way (this is were we stopped the first session). We also attempted making the 10 rectangle cut showed in the assignment document, and found a decent kerf to use. For our next session, we had to schedule it for the next weekend, so I had more time to plan my designs.

For my final designs (which didn’t end up happening, but we’ll discuss this later), I decided on my name, the Rice shield logo, and 4 animal line vector drawings that were connected with a line that would go around the box.

Cutting

We’re ready to cut! Over the course of the week, our classmates were able to iterate their cutting technique and determine the kerf that was best. Raniyah suggested a 0.008 kerf, and also said to use Makeacase.io to make the box shapes since the tabs came out normal. After some initial issues with the laser not cutting the wood (the fill sign was on) and some help from Tori and Rafe, we troubleshooted the problem.

We made a quick test cut to see if the laser was cutting properly. Then we made the press-fit corners to see how the finger slot fit together and if the kerf worked. It all looked and fit great, so we went to cutting our box.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The laser settings for the box were as follows: Rastering = 50s, 50p, 10 dpi, Vector cuts = 4s, 75p, 10 dpi. We chose these settings based off of recommendations from peers and from the setting recs in front of the laser. First we cut my box shapes out onto a board that was taped. Then we put our shapes onto the box images in Illustrator and then did a raster cut only. Because of time, I had to pick only one animal to raster :(, so I picked the sloth!).

The engraving actually came out pretty thin compared to what I expected. The laser also skipped over some areas because of the tape, but I didn’t have a chance to redo it. If I could go back and redo it, I would increase the power and decrease the time slightly for a deeper continuous cut.

Once that was done, I put the box together, and I was done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lessons Learned:

1. The kerf is first – it can make or break your box. While it takes the most time to determine, it’s pretty satisfying having your box click together completely.
2. Play a little with settings! I wish we could’ve had the chance to do that more to determine engraving settings, but this is a learning process!
3. The initial idea does not always translate to the end, so be flexible with the process.

 

Cost:

Wood (1/4”) = $2.75

 Laser cutter = $22,500

Machine time = 4 hours x $7.25/hour x 2 people = $58

Labor (outside of machine time) = 3 hours x $7.25 = $21.75

Total (excluding the laser) = $82.5

This is more inexpensive than the crate and it would probably be cheaper in the future given that we know how to use it now!