For this ENGI 210 project, the objective was to laser cut a box! After having learned how to operate the different laser cutters, both the Epilog M2 and PRO, I got to designing my 4x4x4″ box. The aim is to make it seamless with no further post-processing needed to make it hold and as such, I needed to learn how to dial in the settings….
As taught by our first experience, it is good practice to hone in your settings by making a 0.25×0.25″ square that includes the vector and raster, however I would end up using different numbers as when cutting larger things, the Epilog Pro seemed to be much more powerful than it was in the making of the square. First, I would hone the laser and that was really the only major part, after that just turn on the exhaust and play. I tried the settings that were posted in the groupme for the Pro with vector being 55s, 35p, and 4 cycles while the raster was 600 DPI, 100s, 50p. These settings gave me a good square, although you can see the edges are charred and I ended up going with less power on the vector with higher speed and more cycles. The final setting was 65s. 30p, and 8 cycles to avoid any little flames. These settings did still give me some slight problems however with pieces not ending up fully cut out at a final edge for example but I worked around that.
Starting out
After that, I cut out my kerf box to see how much material I lost. It was a little hard as the pieces would fall out but I measured around 0.079″ leading to a kerf of ~0.008″ due to there being 10 pieces. With that, I used a caliper to measure the thickness of my plywood square and got around 0.185″ thickness.
I of course first tested out smaller versions of the sides, but they gave me a few problems, first with the vector not fully cutting through and when you scale down your original file for the sides, it messes around with the tabs due to them not being long enough compared to the thickness of the wood, leading to incomplete coverage.
Ladies and gentlemen, the kick is good!
All that was left was doing the actual cuts! Unfortunately, I was hungry (no breakie :'( ) and tired after playing around with the cutter and a bunch of other excuses (got lazy) and I did not add a final image as I thought it would be a side that would not show so no point in rastering it (the job took ~22min to complete). In hindsight, I should have added an image there. I am also dumb however as I realized too late that I did not set the images on the correct sides fully, as my plan was to have the top be the identifying side and the 4 sides having images I like.
In the oven!
All in all, it turned out very good, however it was a little difficult to assemble as my kerf was too good (suffering from success). Came into this project with beginner level as my level as it is my first time using a laser cutter.
- 3/16″ plywood using half the piece = ~$6.45 (note: not the exact plywood, hard to find anything, Lowes and Menards would not load for me….)
- Illustrator – Can cost money if you use adobe, we get it free, but there are definitely other methods which I would try if I didn’t have it at school, but for analysis sake $22.99/month
- Labor = 2 and half hours at $15/hr = $37.50
- Epilog Pro 48 laser engraver = $23k per ebay, the bums at Epilog don’t wanna show me the price because I’m not a “business” or “professional” whatever that means.
So if you are starting this as a hobby….. dont, find better alternatives. Materials and labor alone is around $43.95, kind of expensive for a little box. With the applications and tools, it comes out to over $24k.
A clean laser cutter at the end!
