Laser cut two toiletry boxes for under the sink at my new flat. One has a lid, the other doesn’t. I used the boxes.py site to generate the plans (a kerf correction of .07 worked for me and gave a pretty tight fit) and touched up in Inkscape.
I made sure to put care into aligning the finger joints to be at the same height, though Conrad has already pointed out that the grain direction is flipped on the two faces, which I can’t unsee…
Here’s the back of the box with the lid, showing the hinge. I ran a 4x4mm piece of ply through a draw plate to make the hinge pin.
Lessons learned:
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Make use of test settings and cuts. I wasted a piece of ply because I kept the kerf setting in the template generator at the default, and I just assumed that the default laser settings would work for 4mm ply.
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give the pieces a light sanding on the outside face if you want a finish. Do this before assembling if you want the browned burn marks to show through on the joint.
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during the glue up, apply glue with your finger to the inner edges of the finger joints, and make sure to wipe excess away in the direction of the fingers (rather than along the edge).
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make use of a scrap piece and a mallet to get the joints tight. When clamping, use a scrap piece wrapped in paper to avoid imprints in the ply
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I think it looks fine for the lighting it’s in, but I’d like to improve on my finishing skills.
One thing that did keep happening was that in a handful of spots, it looked like the laser only cut halfway through. All of my test cuts would work fine, but on a full sheet of ply, I’d get spots like in the pic below, which I’d have to cut out. After cutting out, it looked like the laser only penetrated about half way. I’m not sure if I’m not using a powerful enough setting, if warping in the board is throwing off the focus, or if there are inclusions of something within the ply. Do any of the @lasertechs have an idea of what I could do next time to address?
