Laser Cut Box

The goal of the project was to design and make a box that would be laser cut. We were given an 11.8" x 11.8" piece of 1/8 Baltic birch plywood to use. The project requirements were that it would be a 6 sided box that will fit within those dimensions. We had to be creative and have a theme for our box. Everyone chose a unique box from the boxes.py website. There were many types of boxes like a coffin box or chest box but I chose a dice box which was a box with six hexagonal spots to put dice in. Since the main point of the box was to hold dice, I chose to engrave a design on the top of the box from the game Dungeons and Dragons since it mainly utilizes dice. The theme of the box would be games since you can use dice for many games. This box would be able to store dice for games like Dungeons and Dragons, Monopoly, and other board games/dice games.

The biggest thing you need is the CNC laser cutting machine that would cut out the pieces of the box and engrave images onto your box. You also need a wood board which would be cut out for the box. You need wood glue which would help keep the pieces of the box together. You can also use paint to color your box if you desire.

First, you have to choose the box you want to make and download its files from boxes.py so that you can transfer them over to the fslaser program. Then, you can change the settings of the parts as needed and add certain images that you want engraved onto the box. I used the dice box and chose to engrave a single image on a part. In order to cut out the box, I needed to have precise cutting settings so that the box could be properly cut. I didn't want to use too much power because it might damage or burn the wood and I didn't want to use too much speed since it may not properly cut all the way through the wood. I used a speed of 100% and a power of 50% on my test cut in order to see if they would be good enough on the rest of the box. I set my image to a speed of 100% and a power of 40%. I had a friend in the class help check my settings and he verified that they would work. The settings seemed good so I applied them to the remaining pieces and was able to cut out the entire box. The total time of cutting and engraving the wood was about 20 minutes.

After all of the pieces are properly cut out, you want to put the pieces together now. When the laser cutter was done, many pieces fell out by themselves but some of them were not properly cut all the way so I had to push them out. My settings seemed good at first but were actually faulty since some of the pieces didn't properly cut and even the hexagons in the piece were suppose to come out but didn't cut. Unfortunately, this is a major part of the box as it is the part that contains the dice so the box is pretty much useless now. Also I used the exact file from the boxes.py but once cut, the pieces would not fit together for some reason. This could be due to some setting error where the pieces weren't cut out properly so it is important to check your settings thoroughly. Since the pieces weren't fitting, I had to force them together and manually cut some parts out but the box didn't come out very good.

This is the end product of the dice box. It has a simple square box shape the opens and closes on a hinge and a design on the top of the box that relates to dice games. Inside, it is not completely hollow as it has 7 hexagonal spots. That is where the dice would be stored so up to 7 dice could be put in the box. The dice can be stored safely in the box for later use.