This project served as an introduction to using a laser cutter for both vector cutting and rastoring. This project was very fun to do and make.

I started my box online using the 3d Box maker to create an Adobe Illustrator image for the sides of my box. To ensure that my box would come out with the right dimensions I had to make the values on the website into the length I want (4in) minus the width of the wood. After this we conducted a Kerf Test. We printed out a 4inx2in rectangle with slots to calculate the Kerf. We calculated a value of 0.06 as the gap in the rectangle and divided it by 10 to get our kerf value of 0.006in.

After finding our kerf value and putting in into the box maker program I had the proper adobe illustrator file to cut out my box. Once in Adobe I made sure to ungroup the file and take just the outlies of my box and make the stroke 0.072pt to ensure that the laser cutter would cut through the outline and not raster it.

After properly setting up the outlines of the shapes I then added a png of McMurtry’s crest and added the necessary text to two different sides of my box. I made sure that the stroke for these was >0.072pt or didn’t have a stroke value. Once I had this complete all that was left was to print out my box.

I shared my laser cutter time with Luke and after watching him cut out his box I decided to change my kerf value to 0.005in because I felt as though it would provide a smoother fit between all the sides.

Once I had my box file imported onto the computer I made my settings for the laser cuter. We decided for the vector cutting to do 6% speed 100%Power with 10f for the frequency, and we went with 100% speed and 50% power on the rastoring.

COST ESTIMATE

Materials

1/4in plywood = ~$12

Labor

2 *$7.50/hour = $15

Operation Costs

Assume laser cutter operation = $25/hour

Laser cutter 2 hours = $50

Total Cost = $77