Best not to store honey in it. Do you want ants? ‘Cause that’s how you get ants!

Since I am a longtime user of SolidWorks, I designed my box in that software. Luckily, recent improvements to the tab-and-slot tools made it easy to establish a starting point. Pretend it is sheet metal, and set the material thickness there. Then use the “tab and slot” feature on each edge. It makes a pair of features, one on each part.

To adjust for the laser kerf, I needed to add an offset within the settings. Make sure “flip offset” is selected or it adds that value to the slots, making them wider rather than narrower. Slot length offset was the adjusted variable. As I had set up the feature with offsets already built into the edge, I set the slot width offset to 0. If it were an internal tab and slot I would need to account for that there.

My first guess at the kerf was the default setting of 0.10mm… in the wrong direction! There isn’t much visual indication on the state of the “reverse offset” button. Unsurprisingly, the parts were far too loose. In testing I saved material by using smaller pieces for my name tag since I only needed the finger joint area.

 

When I eventually got the small pieces to fit securely, I used them to make my crate-project name tag: an open U-shaped 3-faced construction that can hang over the edge of my crate. Because I have future plans for the crate, I didn’t want to permanently mar the surface by drilling or screwing in a name plate.

Lacking a vector file for the Wiess crest on my personal machine or the one at the IPL, and being a Rice employee, I used the Rice owl instead for my engraved box face. I taped it off before etching for a cleaner finish. To have good contrast without too much char, I used a scan setting of 30% power and a speed of 600 mm/s at an interval of .15 mm per x-swing pass of the laser–a slightly different setup than the Epilog machines ta the OEDK.

All that was left to do next was peel the tape, clean the workspace, and deliver my deliverable (which has now been done).

Cost for the box breaks down as follows:

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	5mm underlayment	$25.78	Home Depot	1/8th sheet	$3.25
Labor	Laser Operator	$20/hr	Indeed	0.5 hr	$10
	Prototyping Engineer	$60/hr	OoI rate	2 hr	$120
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	15%	Rockler	–	$29.62
	Quality Control	$17/hr	Indeed	.25 hr	$4.25
Design	Engineering and Development	$60/hr	OoI	1 hr	$60
	Iterations	1
Misc.	Waste and Scrap	Included in materials

First article total: $227.12
Per box thereafter: $20.70

Thanks for reading my blog!