Box Making Website

Came across this from one of the Facebook laser groups

Create boxes and more with a laser cutter!

And here is a write up about it (I think from its creator)

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Great find!

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Hard to tell on my phone but looks very promising. Thanks

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Bookmarked, thanks!

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Nice find.

But why is this in ā€˜Beyond the Manualā€™? Perhaps it should be in ā€˜Everything Elseā€™, with a projectinspo tag? Itā€™s about producing SVGs and not about the cutting.

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Thanks for the share! Iā€™m working right now, but it looks pretty versatile!

Hadnā€™t thought of it that way.

Was thinking of it for design not necessarily developed by Glowforge.

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Cool find! If you look at their GitHub page (that does have the source), they have a script to install this as an Inkscape add-in. Might make it easier to edit with designs and what-not. https://github.com/florianfesti/boxes

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Their boxes work nicely! I had to do some sanding on all the tabs since my kerf was off, but it came together nicely. Hereā€™s the one I did ā€“ the box with top option.

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Itā€™s beautiful! Did you engrave something on the top?

In the end, I did. Despite being just a test box, I swapped it in place of a 3D printed box I made for my sisterā€™s birthday (that Iā€™ve yet to send to her, three months lateā€¦so that worked out!). To that end, since it contains ā€œrocks from Washingtonā€, I engraved the top with some cutesy text, and the inside with me and my wifeā€™s hand-written names and the year (Iā€™m liking the ability to write/draw something and engrave it. Though I wish we could rotate scanned artwork in GFUI like imported SVGs. Maybe in the hopper, @dan?).

The one problem with this box maker is that thereā€™s no registration marks or other indicators to center the smaller insert on the back of the top piece, making it near impossible to get the top aligned just right. I normally put a score mark of where things should be glued in place that gets hidden by the actual piece being glued, but didnā€™t on this. So the top sits ~1mm off to one side. :frowning:

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Add another cut in your design software that duplicates the top. Overlay it on the inner lid piece and use the softwareā€™s center align function to line them up. Then it will cut out a 2nd top with the inner lid piece cut out.

The outer ring will line up perfectly with the top and you can glue the inner part without having to try to find the correct placement freehand. Just donā€™t get any glue on the outer ring so that when itā€™s dry you can just pull off the ring.

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Great tip! You could do that out of cardboard to avoid wasting the good stuff.

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Youā€™re really only wasting the ring which is the difference between the top and the inner lid piece. Itā€™s not much - at least in this case :smiling_face:

Could you give some instructions on how to use GitHub to make a box like yours? Is this a program that will run like box maker? Since I am not a programmer, this looks like Greek to me. :grinning:

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What a great gift, for your sister and for us (you sharing the link)! Very nice result. :sunglasses:

I actually didnā€™t use the github source, but the original link up top. While I do code, I prefer if someone else has done it for me, so I just used their web form :wink:

I chose the ā€œboxes with flexā€ link and then the RoundedBox to get here: http://www.festi.info/boxes.py/RoundedBox

There are a lot of parameters there, but I just changed the size to be more rectangular, leaving everything else as default:

  • y: 80 (inner depth in mm)
  • x: 130 (inner width in mm)
  • h: 70 (inner height in mm)

I clicked the ā€œGenerateā€ button and uploaded the SVG it provided into GFUI (note youā€™ll need to save the resulting page as an SVG. In Chrome I right-clicked and chose ā€œSave page asā€¦ā€ and saved it to my computer)

I should have changed the ā€œburnā€ setting to be less (I guess) as that seems to be the kerf amount.

I hope this helps! :slight_smile:

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Thank you VERY much. Thatā€™s exactly what I was looking for. :grinning:

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Finally had a chance to check out the box scripts online at http://www.festi.info/boxes.py/index.html . Itā€™s actually a collection of web UIs that utilize the python scripts and I have to say they are downright amazing.

Everyoneā€™s use case will be different, but the two features that really make a difference to me are (1) the ability to leave a straight edge at the top of a lidless box, and (2) the fully tabbed bottoms that make it easier to have feet that extend below the bottom surface. Sure, I can (and have) manually edit the results from other generators, but in this case, I didnā€™t have to.

Your mileage will vary, but for my weekend project, I used big-box-store birch ply (micā€™ed @ 0.138") and left the kerf adjustment at the default 0.1 (no units given). All the pieces worked a treat ā€“ snapping together without the need for glue or clamps, although I did add a drop or two of CA to the corner tabs for added security.

If you havenā€™t already bookmarked the site, you really should. :squeeee:

Ease of Use: :star: :star: :star:
Features: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
Quality of output: :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:

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Very niceā€¦just added it to the Matrix! (Now Iā€™m gonna go use it to whip up a few storage trays.) :grinning:

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