This time I built a small box! This box was made in the laser cutter from the OEDK, so the first step was to complete the laser cutting training. Once this step was completed, I gathered the following materials:

• Plywood
• Vernier
• Speed vs Power Gauge Table
• Laser cutter
• Computer with Adobe Illustrator

After gathering the materials, I measured the thickness of the plywood with a vernier.

Then, I used this website called MakerCase en.makercase.com in which I designed the box. The measures of the box were the following:

• Width: 4 in
• Height: 4 in
• Depth: 4 in
• Material Thickness: 0.275 in

And I chose it to be a closed box with finger edge joints with a finger size of 1.0915 in.

The next step was to calculate the kerf. The kerf is the material that is burned and will affect the design of our box. In order to calculate it, I created a new file in Adobe Illustrator. I drew a rectangle with 9 small rectangles inside it.

After creating our file, I turned on the exhaust fan and positioned the plywood inside the cutter with some weight.

Then, I opened the laser cutter  software and start cutting my design for measuring the kerf.

Note: you should not look directly to the laser! These pictures were taken without looking 🙂

Now, it was time to measure the kerf.

For measuring the kerf, I moved the small rectangles against each other and created a gab between the last rectangle and the border of the big rectangle. Then, I measure the gap with a vernier and divided that by 10. I got a kerf of 0.003425 in and included it in the Maker Case settings.

After this, I downloaded the box design and opened it in Adobe Illustrator. The next step was to combine the separate squares into shapes by using the shape building tool. This will help us make the work more efficient. For doing this, I just pressed Ctrl A and Shift M.

Then, I selected the pictures and wrote down the text that I wanted for the engrave design.

Once my file was ready, I opened it in the laser cutter software and adjust the settings according to the type of material used and the engrave that I wanted. For vector:

• Speed: 20%
• Power:100%
• Frequency:10%

For engrave:

• Speed: 80%
• Power:40%

Then, the machine started making the cuts.

After having all the cuts, I assembled each part of the box.

Finally, I calculated the cost estimation for this box.