For this week’s project, Mina and I put our skills to the test in an attempt to create the coolest crate we could think up. 

Cutting and Routing

We began by cutting the wood for our crate. We needed 9 x 14.5” long pieces of 1×4 lumber, 6 x 12” long pieces of 1×4 lumber and 4 x 10-11” long pieces of 2×2 lumber, which we cut on the miter saw. Using the first piece of wood of each size we needed, we set up a stop by clamping another piece of wood to the saw so that we wouldn’t have to measure each time we cut.

After cutting the wood, we laid it out to see what sides we wanted to router with what design. We decided to use a simple round on the long sides of all the wall pieces, except for the top, which we planned to use a more unique pattern for. 

We used the router in the machine room to improve efficiency and uniformity of the routing. We used a piece of scrap to see if the bit was what we wanted and to check the height and placement of the guide. We routed all our wood with no mishaps, but when we tried to change the bit to the one we wanted to use for the top, we weren’t able to change it. We decided to try the handheld router instead. 

We weren’t able to change the bit the one we wanted on the handheld router either (roman ogee), so we used the one that was in already instead. It was different from what we used for the rest of the box, so we were okay with it.

Sanding, Painting and Handles

After finishing the routing, we sanded all the pieces with 60 grit sandpaper on the orbital sander. Since we were planning to spray paint our box, we thought that it would probably be okay to figure out if we needed to sand more after painting. 

We then laid out our box again to determine the color scheme – we wanted to incorporate a few colors, and decided on gold, white, purple, blue and teal. We then painted all the wood except for the top, which we wanted to cut handles into. We wanted to paint both sides of the bottom slats with gold, but ran out in the middle. Since one side was pretty well covered, we decided to keep that gold and paint over the rest with white. 

To cut the handles, we placed Mina’s hand on the wood and traced a rough outline of where the cut should be. We then used the bandsaw to get a rough cut. We got rid of the bigger imperfections using rasps and files, then used sandpaper to smooth it all out. To finish up the handles, we used the tabletop router on the edges.

Once the handles were done, we finished up the spray painting. We sanded all the pieces of wood with 400 grit sandpaper, then went over it all with a clear coat.

Adding Pizazz

To spice up or box, we had the great idea to laser cut our names and some designs on the sides. We settled on doing different album covers, which in theory, seemed like a great idea. We chose Dream Your Life Away (Vance Joy), The Record (boygenius), and American Teen (Khalid). 

Before we could put the album covers on our wood, we had to split each one into three (one section of each piece of wood on each side). We used adobe illustrator to crop the photos and make a top, middle, and bottom file for each piece of wood.

Before cutting on our final wood, we ran a few test cuts on some scrap plywood. We first tried to do the boygenius bottom piece with just the raw photo, but the laser just engraved a uniform rectangle. On our box, this would have just had the effect of stripping off all the paint on the outside face of the wood, which was undesirable. Despite this setback, we still had hope our idea would work. We then tested with the top of American Teen, because it seemed like a simpler design. We also set the photo to grayscale to simplify it further. We waited in anticipation as the laser methodically made its way down the wood. To our relief, the ensign came out well! We decided to go for it on the final wood because we were running short on time, and each engraving would take anywhere from five to twenty minutes.

We started off with what we thought would have the highest rate of success – our names. We placed our first piece of wood in the top left corner of the laser cutter, lined up our file, and pressed go. After a few seconds, we realized that Mina’s name was too low on the piece of wood, but since it had already started, there was nothing we could do but hope that enough of the letters would be visible to tell what they said. Thankfully they were! We learned our lesson and placed the piece of wood for my name in the center of the laser cutter bed and move the file a little higher on the wood than we wanted, just in case. For some reason, the file positioning to laser cutter accuracy worked out better, so my name is slightly high on the wood.

After this slight mishap with cutting our names, we were nervous to proceed to cutting the album covers, but it had to be done. We had told many of our peers and friends about our idea, and they all seemed to think it was pretty cool, so we couldn’t let them down. 

Since the test cut had gone pretty well, we started with the top American Teen. We used the same file as the test, loaded in our wood, and pressed go. Immediately, we could tell that the alignment was a little off, but not off enough to be a big deal. The bigger problem, we realized, was that the way we set up the file to cut left the words “American Teen”, but stripped the rest of the paint from the wood. We switched up our method for the rest of the images, so that the background of each one would be left painted, and the subject of it would be cut. We also realized we had a lot less nuance when cutting painted wood as opposed to the raw wood we were using to test. The only options we really had were painted and not, so we adjusted how our files would look to try to capture the album covers as best we could with this in mind.

For next images, we used a combination of just tracing the shapes that we wanted and only cutting that, or switching the images to 16 or 6 colors, then using the color function in the laser cutter interface to cut only the colors we wanted. The album covers definitely didn’t come out as we originally hoped and intended, but once we looked at them all together, it still looked pretty cool. 

Assembly and Final Touches

After all this, it was finally time to do some assembly! Yay! We started by assembling each layer of the box. For each screw, we drilled a pilot hole, countersunk, then put the screw in. Next, we screwed in the base. When we tried to slide in the base pieces, we found that they were all slightly too large. We tried sanding them to be shorter, but ended up using the bandsaw to take of material more quickly. Once we had the base assembled to the bottom layer, we added the 4 posts. We used pieces of scrap 1 x 4 to space out each of the layers on the posts. Then, miraculously, we had a box!!

 

To finish it up, we used paint to try to get a color match for the spray paint and cover up the screw heads. We also did one final sand with 400 grit to smooth out the corners and any remaining rough bits. After hours and hours, our box was complete.

Cost Analysis: 

• 3 8 ft 1” x 4” wood planks: $8.45 * 3 = $25.35 
• 1 8 ft 2” x 2” wood post: $3.48 
• 5 cans of spray paint: 5 * $7.00 = $35.00
• 60 screws: $6.84 for a box of 72
• Roughly 16 hrs each of labor (cutting, sanding, painting, laser cutting, assembling): 15 x $14.50 = $217.5

Total: $287.81