I walked into this week's requirement with some anxiety because I am quite weak in designing, and I find it challenging to visualize 3D objects from 2D diagram. The whole of Thursday was spent looking through tutorials such as this and this. I also looked at other peoples' works for inspirations, such as the following:
I finally decided to make a tissue box as I have packs of tissue sitting at home, and a tissue box would come in handy to store an opened pack. Then I came across a Box Maker website. Simply input the dimensions and material thickness and viola, I can receive my template in PDF. What more can I ask?! I could have finish this week's assignment in a flash! But in this way, I don't learn anything. I quickly abandoned the idea and confronted the subject matter head-on because the learning journey, though rocky, is more important than the end-product.
I have difficulty visualizing a 3D object to design on a 2D platform. My brain just cannot process the information, so I need to physically construct a model to know where to cut, where not to cut etc. I took some scrap materials to build the following model after taking measurement from my tissue pack.
Another problem was using Inkscape to create the template. I didn't think it was that difficult to create the jagged edges of the joints. At first, I made all the edges have the same orientation, and only realised I have to offset the edges of the receiving face so they can fit each other.
According to this guide, my edges should be clones, and not clone of clones, or clone of clone of clones. Midway, I got confused which objects were linked to the original, and which were not, because they all look the same. So I had to start all over.
Then after I got that sorted out, I was not able to "subtract" the cloned "edges" to the board. I spent the whole of Friday and Saturday just doing the template. The error I received was "one of the objects is not a path". It seems that somehow I need to make the object become a path, and not group or anything else. Someone gave a comment (Comment No. 13) on this issue on this page: "When you click to select the imported svg, the infobar at the bottom of the screen should read “path” (not group or ellipse or rectangle or clipped path or anything else). If it doesn’t you will need to ungroup, release clips, path> object to path or whatever is indicated until it says only path. Once it is a path, the rest of the process should work properly."After spending a good amount of time in Inkscape trying to sort out how to subtract 2 objects, I have decided to put it aside, and use Adobe Illustrator instead to work on my template. And I was glad that I was able to get the result I want, or so I thought.
The dimensions are 165mm x 120mm x 40mm.
Material thickness is 2mm.
I have read up various sources, including this and this that it is important to take into consideration the kerf when planning to laser cut my design. In FabLab @ SP, we have some 2mm white cardboard, and some 3mm MDF boards. I would be using the 2mm white cardboard. First I took measurement of the thickness.
Because Steven has already done some cutting test using the same material to determine the speed and power to use, I would be referring to Steven's test cuts of 20mm x 20mm to input my settings. The lasercutters we use are the Epilog Fusion M2 40 and the EAS Laser Engraver.
I spent the whole of Monday at the fablab, testing out my template and trying out my design. I cut a total of 4 versions because I kept making mistakes. After each version, I would evaluate what went wrong, and how to do better the next time.
I went back to Illustrator to try work out my edges. One of my classmates recommended me to try Inkscape using the tabbed box maker extension which can be downloaded and added separately. The unzipped files saved in ~\Inkscape\share\extensions would appear in Inkscape under the tab Extensions > Laser Tools > Tabbed Box Maker. It seems like common sense, but when I used the extension to generate my template that I understood that the facing joints of each panel must look opposite, and I have to take note of the ending edges of the panels to ensure that they do not obstruct the joints.
I know it was the kerf that I need to adjust, but I wasn't sure how to tweak it. This time, I lowered the amount and the result was the same. It was near the end of the day already, so I had to stop cutting. But that gave me time to think through where I could have gone wrong and how to rectify the problem.
The next morning I decided to do a test print of various settings to find my best fit. I needed to test it out step by step, and not be in a hurry to cut the model.
Except for the top panel, all other sides were cut with a 0.3mm kerf setting. I've re-used the top panel of a previous cut (0.015mm) because I would expect the top panel to be opened and closed frequently to change the content, so it cannot be too tight. On hind side, I should have done the test print of the kerf I need right from the start. As different materials with different thickness will have a different kerf value, this is a caliberation that needed to be done right from the start, even before designing the slots or joints. Now that I know, I will be able to perform better next time.
The vinyl cutter I used was the Roland GS-24. The process is as follows: