Laser Cut Box !!

• Lily

I was pretty hesitant entering into this unit. I had heard a lot about laser cutting and fires resulting from misuse of the laser cutter, so I was doubting my abilities before having the opportunity to test the machine out. But, the TA session, kerf box, and actual laser cut box allowed my feelings of confidence and independence to increase, which will serve me well in future assignments.

To begin, I laser cut the kerf box with the M2 Fusion Pro machine. I made sure to first place the plywood on the cutting bed, adding weights around to ensure the material was flat when cut. I also altered the height of the laser with the triangle metal focus tool, and jogged the laser itself to a strategic position (considering material usage) and set that as the origin. I used .072pt for vector cut stroke thickness with 50% speed, 50% power, and 100% frequency. Before cutting anything, I dry ran the cut to ensure the positioning was good and that the entire cut completed without issue. Then, to actually cut, I cycled through the job 3 times before increasing the power to 55%. This helped the laser cut through more material, yet still I was surprised it was not completely cutting the plywood. I ran it about 4 times after with 55% power until I began seeing pieces fall, indicating the laser had cut through the material and was ready to be removed from the machine. The 100% frequency setting was something I used because I remembered it from the TA session. However, when talking with the lab techs later, I found out I was instead supposed to be keeping the frequency at 50%. I kept that in mind moving forward. Using the caliper, I calculated the average kerf to be .173mm.

After calculating the kerf, I began the file for the box itself. Using the Makercase program, I input the dimensions I wanted (4″x4″x4″), selecting “outside” to indicate these dimensions were for the outside of the box. I used the caliper to measure the thickness of my plywood sheet, which came out to be 4.11mm (.162in), and entered that into the dimensions on Makercase.

I decided to stick with the auto-generated tab size, as the width was larger than .5″, which was the requirement for the project. I then input the kerf I found from the kerf box.

Now that I added all information to the program, I downloaded the file and imported it into Adobe Illustrator. I used the shape builder tool to combine all of the lines on the exterior of the sides into one shape to increase cutting efficiency. Then, I added the required text and college crest (as a .svg file) to the box on Illustrator before saving it as a .dxf file.
I was now ready to laser cut. I set all vector lines to .072pt and everything that was going to be engraved to .216pt stroke size. In advanced settings, I learned from my mistakes and set the vector frequency to 50% (instead of 100%) but kept the speed and power values consistent (50%, 55%). For the raster settings, using the little plaque demonstrating different raster setting combinations, I decided to go with 40% speed and 60% power with 50% frequency. For the practice nameplate I used 40% speed and 80% power, which was too dark and sometimes difficult to visually differentiate between patterns. It also left more char marks than I wanted.
I ran it through a dry run and noticed the job time listed 31 minutes. The laser also wasn’t moving vertically, only laterally. I grabbed a lab assistant and he and the lab tech discovered the issue was my dimensions on Adobe Illustrator. I imported the file from the box program, but because of the template I used for the laser cutting bed somehow the dimensions had doubled to over 8″ per side. They helped me resize, and I reinputted the settings and dry ran the cut again. This time, everything appeared solid. I ran the entire cut through once. It took about 11 minutes.
Then, I hid the images that had just been engraved and ran through the vector cuts a few more times. Next time I will play with the settings more to increase efficiency while still avoiding fire, because I should not have to be cycling through the cut as many times as I did for this assignment.

To assemble the box, I found the tabs were a bit longer than they probably should have been. I was able to force together the starts of some sides, but used a rubber mallet to nicely integrate all joints. Below is a close-up of the connected joints/tabs.

I like how my box turned out. The settings for engraving look nicer than my nameplate. There are still char marks from the cutting, but I like the warm, rustic wooden aesthetic it adds. The engraving looks clean — the lines are neat and bold, nicely depicting the text and image I added. Despite the lack of perfection with the dimensions for the tabs, it came together nicely and looks smooth and continuous.

Note below my last clean workspace for this project (where I assembled the box)!!

In terms of cost,

Total cost would be $37.44.

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