Hey guys, welcome to the second box-making blog of the semester. This week, I made a laser-cut box using MakerCase, Adobe Illustrator, and the Epilog laser cutter. Let’s get into it:

I started the process out by doing a quick kerf test on the wood. This involved creating one large rectangle and a smaller rectangle that has 10 lines inside, laser cutting the rectangles, and (usually) measuring the gaps with calipers. One problem we ran into with this was that the auto-focus on the machine wasn’t working properly, and we got very thick lines that didn’t cut all the way through the wood (pictured). We also wanted to do a test engraving, but had the same problem left over from the auto-focus. Once we manually focused the laser, we got a much better cut on the engraved square (pictured) and finalized the engraving/vector cut settings that would be used on the box itself.

To do a quick kerf test using the simple square we cut out, we used calipers to measure the width of the square, and subtracted it from the expected width of 1 inch. The final kerf we got was approximately 0.005 inches. This was a bit simpler than re-cutting the rectangles, and saved a little bit of space on our wood.

Now it was time to go on MakerCase and design the sides of the box. I used a 4x4x4 design with a thickness of 1/4 inch (which matched the thickness of our wood), finger size of ~0.7, and a kerf of 0.005. Then, I imported this design into Adobe Illustrator and changed the stroke on these lines to 0.072pt.

For the engravings, I chose the Rice Crest, the University of Illinois logo, and an ear of corn (from the Noun Project website). I placed these closest to the center of each side of the box that I could. For the stroke on these, I used 0.004 inches.

The settings that I used on the laser cutter are as follows:

Vector cut: Speed: 18%, Power: 100%, Frequency: 10%

Engrave: Speed: 25%, Power: 30%

I sent the design to the laser cutter, did a quick trace to make sure it was in the right place, and hit play. Luckily for me, the engraving and vector cuts turned out almost exactly how I wanted them to, however a few sides of the boxes took some effort to “punch” out of the wood. The box also fit together on the first try, which was super relieving. Here are some pics of the final box!

Here are some things I’d work on if I had more time:

1. Redoing the vector cuts for the sides of the box to make them easier to take out, or just use a smaller speed in the first place.
2. Add more graphics so that each side of the box was filled with something.
3. The Rice logo is a bit hard to make out. I’d maybe try a decreased speed on this part.

COST ANALYSIS:

1/4 inch thick, 2x4ft wooden sheet: $12.98/sheet * 1 sheet = $12.98

Laser Operator: $16.74/hr * 2.5 hr = $33.48

Prototyping Engineer: $38/hr * 0.5 hr = $19

Facility Costs (Overhead): $1.20/8hr * 2.5 hr  = $0.38

Quality Control: $41/hr * 0.25 hr = $10.25

Engineering and Development: Covered in Prototyping + Laser Operator

Iterations: Negligible

Waste: The rest of the wooden sheet (included in the materials section).

TOTAL COST: $76.09