On a Friday night at 8pm, the week that the assignment was released, Ashley and I went to the OEDK to get a very early start to our laser cut boxes. The wood laid out on the ENGI table had this sticky note on it.

It says “This may not laser cut well at all”

As there was no one else in the OEDK and it seemed like the right wood wasn’t available, we decided that we would spend our time experimenting with laser cutting and the wood and return another day to quickly make our box. We went on en.makercase.com, set the dimensions to 2x2x2 inches, ensured that it was set to “Outside” dimensions, Closed Box, Finger Edge Joints, and then also set the finger edge width to .5015in. We also measured the width of the wood to be 1/4in. To play around with kerfs, since the document said it should be between 0.012in and .015in, we started with 0.012. After downloading the file, we imported the file to illustrator, left the names of the sides as etchings on the box (“right,” “left,” etc), then followed the instructions for the laser cutter from the laminated sheet in front of the computer (Stroke set to .001in, raster set to 0.072pt). We laser cut that box and the following was the product:

As you can see, the edges were significantly darker than desired, and the etch itself didn’t look great. My understanding is that this wood needed a faster speed setting. The reason the box’s edges weren’t flush might be because the kerf settings were off or because this type of wood didn’t allow for proper laser cutting.

When I returned later in the week to use the appropriate plywood to laser cut the box, I decided to make some changes based on what the other students had done. I started off with using “make a box.io” instead. The wood thickness was measured to be around .2016in by the caliper, so I rounded that to 0.2 inches. Then, to get my box’s dimensions to be around 4x4x4, I entered 3.8in in each of the dimension spaces on the website to account for the thickness of the wood. Based on what was mentioned in the group chat, we set our kerf to 0.0065in and our stroke to 0.001in. The margin and padding were auto-set to 0.125in and 0.1in. Then, I downloaded the file to Illustrator, and placed some text and a Rice owl into two of the sides to test how they would print out. I also placed blue masking tap on the entire length of the wood to be laser cut because I had heard that that reduced burn marks around the edge of the wood and the etchings. My Raster settings were: speed 60, power 40; My Vector settings were: speed 6, power 100, and frequency 10. These were based off of some of the settings we worked with the previous week and from what we had heard from other classmates. We used the laminated instructions sheet to prepare the laser cutter and send the print job to it (Stroke 0.001in, Raster 0.072pt). This was the result.

The edges looked exactly the right maple honey color that was talked about during class, but we skipped a step on the instructions (hit Ctrl A and Shift M and selected all the boxes separately in order to ensure that the laser cutter doesn’t cut each line on its own) so the laser cutting was very inefficient. However, I liked the overall look of the cut pieces, so I kept the settings the same for the next round.

I added the UT health logo, Rice university crest, and the UH logo as well as added the necessary text to four different boxes, ensured that I had done the previously skipped step properly, kept all of the same settings as before, and covered in it’s entirety in blue masking tape before sending the file to be print. The whole print job took 9 minutes.

I decided to keep the the tape on while I assembled the box. It took a little bit of extra effort to get the box edges to fit into one another, but it worked in the end. After I took the tape off, I noticed that there were some flaws.

Wherever the blue masking tape had slightly folded over on itself or had a crease, the laser cutter couldn’t get through and etch properly, which was unfortunate. However, I liked that the blue masking tape could be left behind in some of the etchings. That gave it a nice aesthetic look.

And here is the overall box!

This press-fit box is 4x4x4 inches of .2in plywood with four finger tabs on each edge, with etchings of three college crests/logos and identifying information. I wish that I had better planned out which all sides the etchings would go on, so that all of them were on sides that weren’t on the top or bottom. Additionally, I wish I had ensured the masking tape hadn’t doubled over in some sections. If I were to do this again, I would make the crests bigger, and also use kerf 0.007in, which others stated had a better result for ease of putting the box together.

Cost

• plywood:
  • Lowes has a 1/4in x 2ft x 4ft piece of plywood for $13.28
  • I used nine 4in x 4in pieces, and six 2in x 2in pieces. That is about 1/6th of that plywood piece. So for the amount I used = 13.28/6 = $2.21
• Labor
  • I spent 4 hours on this project. At $7.25/hour = 7.25 x 4 = $29
• Laser Cutter: free from the OEDK
• Adobe Illustrator: free from the OEDK
• Total = 2.21 +29 = $31.21