Once upon a time, there was a little plank of wood named Jimmy. Jimmy always dreamed of being used to make something awesome. “I could be a car,” they thought, “or a boat! Or even… a box!” One day, the professors assigned their students to make a box held together only with finger joints – no adhesives necessary. One lucky student (me) chose Jimmy to complete this fantastical endeavor, and so, this project began.

I first needed to focus and configure the laser cutter’s settings so that my wood would be cut all the way through and it came out with my desired look. Since my wood was a bit bowed, I used a few metal weights laying around to flatten it out. Then I did a small test cut to find my optimal settings. For cutting, I settled on speed at 3%, power at 50%, and a frequency of 10%, and for etching, I liked the result of speed at 10% and power at 10% the best. Below are the three test cuts I made.

Test cuts; chosen settings on far right

3rd time’s the charm?

After I was satisfied with the settings, I needed to calculate the kerf of the laser. I did this by cutting one large rectangle into six smaller ones, pushing the small rectangles together, and measuring the distance between the last rectangle and the edge of the larger rectangle with a caliper. Then, I divided that number by six and got the thickness of the laser to be 0.001″. Factoring this in and plugging my other measurements into MakerCase, I got a template that I placed into Adobe Illustrator, adding the Jones college logo, my name, and a few other designs that I thought would be funny. Behold, Jimmy’s new form!

Successes and Limitations

The entire process managed to go very smoothly, so I count that as a win. I also was able to do some troubleshooting when attempts didn’t quite fit together the way they were supposed to.

For failures, on my first attempt, I forgot to set the thickness of the wood to 0.202″, so the finger joints weren’t long enough to properly lock together. On the second attempt, I mistakenly increased the kerf tolerance, which made the joints very loose. However, both of these issues were easy fixes, and the only true loss was a bit of my time.

Finger joints are too short

Cost:

1/8″ Plywood estimate (Woodpeckers): $6

Labor (2.5 hr, $10/hr): $25

Total: $31