In this blog, we will see how I created a box using laser cutting. So to get started I created the box on makercase website to create a SVG file for a six face box. The width, height, and depth must all be 4 inches on the exterior. The material’s thickness is 0.197 inches, however I rounded it to 0.2 inches to allow for a small tolerance. I chose a finger size of 0.8 so that there are equally 5 fingers on each edge. I changed the kerf to 0.007 before downloading the file at the recommendation of my fellow students in case they are too tight during assembly. Then I downloaded the SVG file and went to adobe illustrator. I opened the SVG file and adjusted it. 

Later on I downloaded some SVG file type logos from google. I added these logos carefully in each block. The logos used include India map layout, Gateway of India, Flower logo, Dog paws and sunset. Then I set the vector measurements and adjusted all the settings before printing. However, my first attempt failed as I forgot to turn off the vector cutting for the logos so instead of just engraving the logos we also cut.. Still I did not give up and went for the second try, this time I carefully set all the settings and sent it to print on the machine.

Then I started the printing, the engraving took about 1 minute. Whereas, the vector cutting about 7 minutes and this time the cutting was perfect. Later on, I started putting together the pieces together.

                                                     

And it’s done!!!

  

 

Cost Analysis:

Material	Cost	Amount/Hours	Total Cost
1/4 ” Plywood	$10.50	1	$10.50
Prototyping Engineer	$40	1	$40
Logo Designer	$20	1	$20
Lase Cutter	$3	1	$3
Laser Cutter Operator	$22	1	$22
Total			$95.79