While making a 4” tight fit cube seems like a very straightforward assignment, it definitely came with its fair share of struggles. Before Katy, Jeff, and I started we had heard from others that calculating the kerf and adjusting the box designs from en.makercase.com was not leading to success. Instead of using the pre-made design, we started by making test pieces to find the best outer/inner cut dimensions. Each of the edges and slots in the design below had a varied width or height to find the best fit without making multiple pieces.
From our test cuts we found that for our 5mm stock piece of wood, the extended connections should be 5.004mm by 10mm. For the slots we accounted for 9.5mm by 4.904mm. This gave us the tight press fit we wanted and an almost flush finish. We confirmed this with other test cuts where we also tested using tape to prevent burning. Once we were satisfied with the fits and dimensions, Jeff updated a box design in Rhino with our dimensions and then we shifted focus to our raster designs added in AI.
Vector Settings 4 Speed 100 Power 10 Frequency Raster Settings 100 Speed 40 Power
We tested rastering to confirm our settings before we actually cut a full size test piece. Satisfied with everything, we created a layout with all 18 pieces so that we could raster and then cutout our boxes in two passes. Our plan was to raster our images and then apply tape everywhere and then cut. Unfortunately for us, when we got to cutting out our final pieces, the settings we had been using did not actually cut completely through. We tried running a second pass but that didn’t work and afraid of burning our edges to much we abandoned that wood and found an alternative that we were able to cut after adjusting the focus a few times. From there, it was pretty much smooth sailing minus the stress of fitting the final piece without snapping anything. After the fact, we found out that the laser lens had been dirty which is why we had issues with our cut after it had been working.
Cost Estimate: Material: 1 X 5mm Plywood (4’ by 8’) = $23.38 $23.38/28 = $0.835/box Labor: 30 mins (design and layout) 1 hr (adjusting laser settings, cutting, and assembling 1 box assuming prior experience) $7.25*1.5 = 10.875 Space Fee: $15 for 1 hr Total cost = $25.71 Assumptions: A single side of our box required 5” by 5” so we could have cut 28 total boxes from one stock sheet of plywood Access to a similar maker space would incur a fee of $15 an hour for access to the laser cutter Minimum wage labor costs for the design, cutting, and assembly Material cost from Lowes.com
