This assignment is laser-cutting a box and assembly. I chose a wood board with 0.2-inch thickness and make sure it’s flat enough.
And I went to Makercase website to generate a SVG file for six faces of a box. As required, the width, height and depth are all 4-in as outside dimensions. Material thickness I measured with caliper is 0.197 in, but I rounded up to 0.2-in to have little tolerance. Finger size I chose is 0.8 to have equally 5 fingers at each edge. Before downloading the file, I adjusted the kerf to 0.007 based on other students’ advice in case they are too tight during assembly.
As downloading the SVG file and open it with adobe illustrator. I googled a few PNG images of rice logo, cat and dog, and converted it all of time to SVG format at pngtosvg website. As opening all the downloaded patterns for engraving, I added all of them on the box file and adjust their dimensions and positions.
To differentiate the cutting and engraving, I set the stroke of box as 0.001-inch and patterns (including text) as 0.003inch. I got started to print them out with laser cutting machine till all the parameters are all set. I turned the fan on and auto-focus the laser beam to the wood board, which was fixed with a few weights at corners.
At the first time, I set the speed of cutting as 22s, but it seems like little fast since the cut seems not to go through the board. I have to re-do it and set speed of vector to 20s. This time is much better with just little connection at the edges. I didn’t want my box to crack, so I use ultrasonic blade to cut the joints a little to take the box out of the board entirely. As I assembled the box, I felt it’s still little tight to assemble with hands. I grabbed a hammer to help me put finger joints together. So, it fits very well.
My experience laser cutting a wooden box was a journey of creativity and precision. It’s definitely useful to make some decor made of wood or acrylic.
Cost calculation:
Cost Type | Cost | Price | Source | Quantity | Total |
Materials | 1×4 Board | $0.91/sqft | Lowe’s | 2 sqft | $1.82 |
Labor | Woodworking Operator | $24 | indeed | 1 h | $24 |
Prototyping Engineer (You!) | $38 | ZipRecruiter | 1 h | $38 | |
Overhead | Facility Cost (laser cutter) | $20 | Xometry | 2h | $40 |
Quality Control | $41 | ZipRecuiter | 0.5h | $20.5 | |
Design | Engineering and Development | $0 | N/A | N/A | $0 |
Iterations | N/A | N/A | N/A | $0 | |
Misc. | Waste and Scrap | $21.58/piece | Woodpecker’s craft | 0.5 piece | $10.79 |
Total | $135.11 |