I was really excited to learn how to laser cut, particularly because of the ability to engrave on wood. As I continue to develop this skill, I’d like to try to engrave a photo onto wood. This will require more time to familiarize myself with Adobe Illustrator, too, but this box project was great practice and a start.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I started by practicing engraving and cutting on scrap wood. This helped me identify which settings gave me the results I wanted. Some of the challenges during this step were that even if I kept the settings consistent for the same piece of scrap wood, sometimes some of my boxes wouldn’t be cut all the way through, or some engravings came out much more charred than others. I noticed that whenever I wanted to cut something close to or on the edge of the wood, this is where a lot of things wouldn’t be cut all the way through. I had no issues with this in the center area of the scrap wood, so my guess is that the thickness of the wood is not very evenly distributed throughout or that I didn’t place enough weight to deal with the warp of the wood. 

Another challenge was figuring out where to focus the laser in terms of placement, since it starts cutting a little off from where the “zero” is set. After getting some practice, I figured out the speed and power settings I wanted, as well as a better understanding of where to place the laser to cut where I wanted to. The next step was to generate a 4″ x 4″ x 4″ closed box with finger joints using the MakerCase website. I did a kerf test using a small rectangle, and then tested the press fit on a small 1″ cube I made on the website. Since I did this test on scrap wood to practice, the kerf value I got didn’t work well on the wood I was going to use for my final box. The kerf values that worked were 0.005″ on the scrap wood and 0.003″ on the final wood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

After creating my box file with the desired kerf value, I downloaded some plant icons from Noun Project and began placing them in the box faces. I also did a couple of test runs to achieve my desired darkness of the engravings. After this, things ran smoothly and I cut and engraved all six sides. The sides all snapped on with a tight press fit. In retrospect, I should’ve used tape to minimize the charring in some areas, but overall I’m really happy with the end result. This is a great box to store some of my trinkets in!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cost Model for Laser cutting a box

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	¼” plywood	$0.91/sq ft	Lowe’s	1	$0.60
	Icons	Free website	NounProject	1	–
Labor	Woodworking Operator	$24.25/hr	Salary.com	2 hrs	$48.50
	Prototyping Engineer	$39.14/hr	Salary.com	1 hr	$39.14
Overhead	Operating cost	$12.73/hr	AlphaLazer	3 hrs	$38.19
	Quality Engineer	$35.42/hr	Salary.com	1 hr	$35.42
Design	Engineering and Development	Free website	MakerCase	1	–
	Iterations	–	–	1	–
Misc.	Waste and Scrap	$0.91/sq ft	Lowe’s	2’ x 3’	$5.46

The total for laser cutting this box comes out to $167.31.