Boxes 3/12

    Yesterday we continued working on our boxes. Our professor recommended that we use France’s method of joining our sides using screws and cutting slots for the screws in the sides of our pieces.
    Then he showed us how to use the laser cutter on our own. Important things to remember when using the the laser cutter are:

• Save your image as an eps
• Make sure that your lines are RGB red (red 255, blue 0, green 0) and less than .003” wide
• Print your drawing from Core and set the page size to about the same size as your image
• Use the positioning tool to position your material vertically
• Refer to the numbers on the board by the laser cutter to decide what power and speed to use for  your material
• Don’t touch the laser head or crash the material into the laser

    The hardest part of using the laser cutter is that it often takes two or three passes to cut all of the way through. You have to be careful when check to see if it has cut all through not to move the material, otherwise you will loose precision. It is possible to slow down the velocity of the laser so that you can cut through the material in one pass. But you have to be careful not to slow it down too much because you risk melting the material or starting a fire.
    I had drawn my pieces in Illustrator, and I was planning on cutting some out and testing how they fit together, but then I decided to add screws to my box, so I just started over. I like new drawing better, though, because so far all four of the sides are the same. However, I am positive that this will change when I add the movable joints.
    The moveable joints are what I am most unsure about right now. He gave us a few solutions when we started building our boxes, but I didn’t really like them. One solution was to join the two sides with fingering joints, but to make the parts that stick out curved on top so that they can rotate. Then you drill a hole through the pieces and put a rod through the whole for the piece to pivot around. The problem with this is that I don’t know how to make the curved parts, and I do not want to use the drill press. He also suggested making springs by cutting very thin pieces with the laser cutter, but I think this might be difficult to achieve. Another idea was to just use contact paper for hinges, but I think there must be a better way.

(image from http://blog.makezine.com/2011/10/25/plywood-living-hinge-technique-for-laser-cutters/)   
    I googled laser cut hinges and found that one of the most popular ways to make moveable joints with a laser cutter is to use living hinges. Living hinges are places where the material can bend because lines have been cut part way through the material to make it more flexible. People have used both wood and plastic, but wood seems to be more popular for living hinges. I want to try this, but I think I will have to do a few tests to get it to work. I do not know how deep you want the cuts to be, and I do not know of a precise way to determine how deep your cut will be. I think it will be a process of trial and error. Another thing that is important to consider is where the hinge starts and where it ends. If it starts too low on the box there will be a weird gap. The boxes are so small that I do not know if there is enough space to make the hinge wide enough that the material will flex, but thin enough that the box doesn’t have a weird gap. I think that to make a living hinge you would have to cut out the piece first and then put it back in the laser cutter to cut part way through it for the hinge. I wonder if there is a more precise way to position the laser than the arrow buttons? I am not sure how sturdy these hinges will be, but I think that they will be at least as sturdy as contact paper, and more aesthetically pleasing.
    So far all of my decisions about my box have been based on research on the internet, careful thought and observations of others. Part of the reason for this is that I don’t want to waste materials.  But I know that on Thursday I really need to actually make something and test it out.