For this weeks assignment, I was tasked with creating a box using the laser cutter.

I felt pretty confident with using the laser cutter after the prior training so I decided to jump right in by turning on the laser cutter and sending the kerf file to the machine. I placed my piece of wood in upper left hand corner of the bed and placed two weights on top of it (these were thin to ensure the laser head would not hit them while cutting) so the wood wasn’t bowed while cutting. I used the power, speed, and resolution guide that was found near the machine to make sure the laser would cut all the way through and once everything was placed on the bed, the door was closed, and the vent was turned on I was able to start my cut.

Once the kerf box was cut I removed it from the machine and put all the rectangle pieces back inside and measured the distance of the gap. The gap was 0.12 in, therefore the kerf value that I needed to put into en.makercase.com for my box was 0.012 in. As far as the rest of the design, I chose to make my box 4.25″x4.25″x4.25″ with a tab width of 0.78625″. I saved the file, pasted it into illustrator, made sure all cuts were set to the right speed/power, and all the engravings were set to 75 speed and 50 power. I sent this to the laser cutter, placed my wood back in the machine in the upper left hand corner, put the weights on it, made sure the vent was on, and started the cut.

Once the cut was finished, I removed my piece of wood from the machine and started fitting all the pieces. This was quite messy since there was charring along the edges of each piece (I sanded a little bit later to get all the dark spots off). I had a little bit of trouble at first putting the pieces together, and thought I might break it if I pressed to hard, but with a little bit of wiggling back and forth I was able to fit all the pieces together and was very pleased with my box.

After I finished I made sure to clean up my area. I tidied up the work bench in the back left corner, put the weights back where I found them, and brought my pieces of wood back to the ENGI 210 table.

Cost Estimate

Cost Type	Cost	Price	Source	Quantity	Total
Materials	2’x4’x3/16” Board	$ 12.89	Home Depot	1/10	$ 1.29
	Painter’s Tape (optional)	$ 7.98	Home Depot	0	0
Labor	Woodworking Operator	$18.00/hr	Ziprecruiter	30 min	$ 9.00
	Prototyping Engineer (You!)	$10.00/hr	Personal Charge	1 hr	$10.00
Overhead	Facility Cost (Machine Time)	Electricity Charge $0.1598/kwh 1.5 – 10 kwh	Accurl.com	10 min	$ 0.13
	Quality Control (part replacement/maintenance)	$ 2000+	Sendcutsend.com	–	–
Design	Engineering and Development	$ 50.00/hr		5 min	$ 4.16
	Iterations			0	$ 0.00

 

Total Cost: $ 15