Avery’s Laser Cut Box

Introduction

While I have had previous experience using a laser cutter a few years ago, I found myself having to relearn most of the steps, so this project was a great way to refresh my memory.

Process

After reading the instructions, I measured the thickness of the wood I was given and created a box template on Makercase with an initial kerf value of 0.012″ (as suggested in the google doc). I placed my sheet of wood on the bed, using weights in the center to counteract the bow, and cut out two sides of the box. I found that the finger joints could partially fit together only after applying a great deal of force. I did some more research on kerf and changed my value to 0.005. I recut those two sides, this time with my name and college crest engraved. However, I accidentally allowed the laser cutter to both engrave and cut out my name, which resulted in the effect below.

This was obviously not what I intended, so I edited my file so that the words would not be recognized as a vector.

At this point, I wanted to add a creative design to my box, so I tried cutting out a bunch of small stars on the sides of the box and a sun on the top. However, this created a lot of burn marks, and I didn’t like the look of the design.

I removed all of the cutouts from my file and decided to do some simple flower engravings instead. I liked this cleaner look much better. I ran into one more issue at this point, where the last line got cut off from my file, so one of the pieces wasn’t fully cut.

I didn’t want to risk messing up the rest of the wood by trying to cut that last line, so I adjusted the file (making sure the whole outline was included) and redid the square.

Here is my finished box!

Cost Estimate

Plywood (Home Depot estimate): $8

Labor: $10 per hour * 3 hours = $30

Total: $38

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