First Steps
I started to work on this project with Sarah when we used the laser cutter to make a kerf test. We couldn’t find the pre-made file on canvas so we decided to make one ourselves on adobe illustrator. The first time we tried to do this test, we accidentally created the rectangle on the file before the 10 lines which caused the pieces fall through the rectangle.
Sarah and I using the caliper to measure the gap in the rectangle after cutting 10 lines
The rectangle falling through the wood because we cut it first
We measured a gap of around 0.111 inches. This was all Sarah and I had the time to do that day, so we left the OEDK.
I came back a few days later to laser-cut my box. The first thing I did was test my settings by cutting a small rectangle on my sheet of wood.
As can be seen by the image above, my first few cuts with the laser cutter were too light. After a few tries, I managed to get the right settings for the square to be cut properly. My mistake the first few times was that I had not defined the stroke to be 0.001 inches.
I circled the setting I forgot to adjust in red.
Designing my box
Now that I had familiarised myself with the laser cutter a bit more and that I knew which settings to use, I used the given box making website on the assignment’s google doc. I made a file for a box of dimensions 4″ x 4″ x 4″ and I thought a finger size of 0.60475 looked nice.
Added my name to one of the box’s sides
Added my college crest
I then sent this file to the laser cutter which took around 22 minutes to cut. I thought I was done, BUT for some reason the laser did not cut the sides all the way through. This stressed me a bit because I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I ended up deleting my college crest and the writing and changed the settings so that I was sure the laser would cut through. I restarted the cutting and laser cut over the ends of the box that it already outlined.
Final Steps
All I had to do now was assemble the box’s pieces together (which I had a bit of trouble fitting at some times). At some parts, I had to really force the pieces to get together and a lot of crunchy noises were made during this process. I was a bit scared by those noises because I didn’t want the sides of my box to break.
Here is what it looks like now!
Cost analysis
Labor costs = 18.11 (average salary of woodworker in the US, Indeed.com) x 2 = $36.22
Cost of wood = $20.93 (Home Depot)
Total = $57.15
