Hi! This is the process of how I made a laser-cut box!

I began by using Makercase’s online box designer to generate a laser-cut file for a 4x4x4 box, with three finger joints on each side. Personally, I like this box to have three finger joints because I think it looks the best with the scale of the box. It holds enough stability and still keeps the box’s surface simple. I then set the kerf to 0.013 and downloaded the file in SVG to import to Adobe Illustrator.

After importing the SVG file in Illustrator, I selected a font I preferred with my name, the course title, the semester, and the date I made the box. I the inserted Sid Richardson’s logo onto the surface of the box. To better differentiate whether the line is a score or a cut, I changed the outline that I want it to cut in red to remind myself when laser cutting on the Epilogue Pro Laser Cutter.

I followed the steps on the instruction sheet and did a test cut of a simple square before running the actual laser-cutting file. The setting I used was Power 10, Speed 25, and Frequency 10 settings. After testing out the test cut, I then started to cut and engrave my actual box. The settings for engraving were Power 50, Speed 100, and DPI 600. Before cutting, I made sure that I put weight around the cutting area, so that the wood piece would be flat and even when cutting.

When I tried to fit the box together, I found the pieces to be slightly too light because the kerf of the setting could be a little bigger. I then used sandpaper to sand the finger joints a little bit to create more gaps until they could fit into the notches easily.

I got a rubber mallet to hammer the pieces together, and the box became very sturdy and stable. I also decided to sand down the surface of each piece to remove the burn marks and make the surface smoother. 

Here is an image of my cleaned workspace:

Cost estimates:

⅕” basswood planks: $24.99/16 * 2 sheets =$ 3.12

120 grit sandpaper: $10.26

2 hours of labor: $10×2 = 20

Total: $33.38