So I had to build a wooden box again but this time, it would be closed an made using laser cut sections with finger joints. Together with my group members Andrew and Daniel, we carried out a kerf test on a piece of scrap wood and determined the kerf to be 0.004 in. After that, it was only a matter of downloading the file from the makercase website having adjusted the settings and then editing it in illustrator. Here I added the Sid Rich college logo and then also wrote my name and the class details on separate sides of the box which were to be engraved on the box. So my first attempt to cut out the box and engrave it didn’t really go as well. As the laser cutter was engraving my name, I noticed it was too shallow and difficult to see, so I stopped it and reset.

I checked illustrator and noticed that I had put incorrect stroke thickness for this text part so I corrected it to 0.0035″ and that worked. It engraved my name well, however now I had a different problem. Firstly, the laser cutter didn’t seem to recognize the Sid logo so it completely skipped it despite it having the correct stroke settings. After cutting out the entire box pieces, I isolated the sid logo in Illustrator and then tried to engrave it to a piece and this time it recognized it but the logo didn’t look as good with the inner parts being indistinguishable.

Therefore, I redid it this time with no fill and thought it had a cleaner look to it so I stuck with it. And after snapping the sections together my box was done!! Overall, the challenges with illustrator notwithstanding, this was fun and I feel confident using the laser cutter.

Costs

Materials: 0.2 ” thick wood and Tape – $3

Labour: $7.5 hr for 3 hrs – $22.5

Laser cutter rental: $10/hour for 2hrs – $20

Total = $45.5