Another week of box making, this time using lasers!
I’ve never used a laser cutter before but I really appreciate the chance to become more familiar with it as it is an excellent tool for rapid prototyping and even just creating finished products all-together!
This time we were supplied with a 1/4” wood board and access to illustrator and the laser cutter and online tools to help design our box. For starters I used en.makercase.com to get a vector image of the sides of the box to be cut. After that, using The Noun Project, I decorated the sides of the box with images to engrave.
Once the file for the box was ready, I joined some other classmates that were doing their box at the same time. We did the suggested test to estimate the kerf and got a result of an average kerf of 0.0083”. With this in mind we were now ready to cut out our boxes.
Vector for kerf test
The estimated kerf of 10 rectangles cut side by side
Once this was done I proceeded to cut out and engrave my box. The engraving was done using 600DPI, XX Power and 100% Speed setting. For the cutting I wanted to do two passes with a frequency of 10%; the first pass would be at 50% Power and 25% speed to mark the path of the laser for vector cutting, after which I would cover the work surface with masking tape to reduce the burn marks on the wood ( a little trick I picked up on training when noticing some scraps had tape on them). For the second pass I used the laser cutter at 80% power and 18% speed (values used for the kerf), which yielded great results as the sides of the box basically fell from the board when I lifted it with only a little help needed to get some of them out. While assembling the box, the finger joints didn’t quite lock in place all the way, so I gave them a little motivation using a mallet. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the result and it’s good to get more comfortable with the laser cutter.
Finished box
| Cost | Price | Amount | Source | Quantity | Unit | TOTAL |
| 2x4ft Board 1/4” thick | $21.98 | 8 | Lowes.com | 0.667 | sqr ft. | $1.83 |
| Woodworking operator | $19.00 | per hour | Ziprecruiter.com | 2 | hours | $38.00 |
| Prototype/Designer/Development (same Woodworker) |
$19.00 | per hour | Ziprecruiter.com | 0.5 | hours | $9.50 |
| Facility & tooling cost | $250.00 | per month | txrx.org | 3 | hours | $1.04 |
| Quality Control | $18.00 | per hour | Ziprecruiter.com | 0.5 | hours | $9.00 |
| NET TOTAL | $59.37 |
