Design Challenge

I am planning on sharing my designs once I get my own GF and the Design Catalog goes live. I want to make sure everything works on a GlowForge before I share them.

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@polarbrainfreeze You are a good man!

Well then, I will share a designed I posted on the forums earlier.

If you follow the boardgamegeek.com link on that thread you will see the current foam core solution I am looking to replace.

These are great… I’m just glad this is getting submissions. As promised, here is a picture of the prize. 1/8" black gloss acryic plexiglas

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@joshferintino, this is really cool of you! I will try to submit something too, but I think @polarbrainfreeze has me well beat with the Box that thinks it is a Container. (a stretch of a reference to a card from Cards Against Humanity)

Here is my resubmission of the matchbox I did.

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@spike, Your “You are a good man” statement made me think. I think it could be more properly stated as: “You are a good man … who also wants to profit from his designs at one point”

I do want to share my designs, but I’m torn by a desire to also want to make a bit of income from my designs as well once the Design Catalog is up.

By nature, I like to show people how I do things. I like to share and teach, and learn from others. But I’m finding that I’m holding back a bit on sharing certain designs just because I think I may be able to sell them at one point. But that holding back frustrates me a bit. But not enough to just give them away. I’m happy to show people how I do what I do, and answer as many questions as I can.

I’m looking forward to having the Design Catalog open, so that when people ask “Can you share the design with me”, I can say “YES!, It’s right in the design catalog”, instead of “No, not yet”.

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I was a bit surprised when you posted something so fantastic on this tread, which is why I asked if you would be posting the files. My take on this thread was that whatever gets posted here is provided to the community for anyone to try for free.

“I thought I might issue some weekly design challenges for the others who are also in my position. This will get the creative juices flowing and people will be able to download the plans for free.”

Maybe @joshferintino can better clarify his intents of this tread?

I think your designs are fee worthy for sure…

I think if a design database by glowforge were to go forward in this manner, whoever is the creator of the design should be able to specify what level of sharing they would like to have, based on permissions:

User can only see design [yes/no]
User can print [yes/no]
User can download file and/or upload a revision [yes/no]

Obviously these permissions should be able to be applied to everyone publicly or just specific people/groups.

This would allow people to share their designs to their max level of comfortability without having to give away things they dont want to.

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I second @takitus! I would love to have this ability.

I started this thread because I wanted a more of a community feeling about the things in the laser made forum. I wanted people to start thinking specifically about How they are going to start using their glowforge when they get it, and at the same time prod them(and myself) into starting to make files for their use later. I care more about the HOW things are done than what is actually done, which is why I like looking at cut files and hearing about process. That’s why I want to be able to download the plans and be able to use techniques that other people have come up with on my own projects. I understand that @polarbrainfreeze put a lot of effort into both of his pieces that he put on this forum and he has the right to profit from it later. For next week’s challenge I will have a more clear and defined set of rules and the things that are needed to enter. For this week the challenge will just be based on the design of the box itself where all is needed to submit is a drawing/ picture/ 3d rendering.

Sorry if I misunderstood the intent of your contest. This may be more up your alley then.

I make what I call multi-layered boxes. That is, boxes that have multiple layers, and each layer has more detail. Here is an example:


You can see more pictures of it at: Making The Cut: Insect Box. This box has 3 layers.

Those boxes were designed in SketchUp. But now that I want to make more intricate ones, SketchUp is not great at changing the dimensions of an existing design. I’m starting to learn something that’s a little easier to customize.

I’ve written an scad program to generate the nested box pattern. You can give it the depth, width and height of the box, as well as the width of the material and a few other parameters, and it generates the outline of the nested boxes (you can also specify the number of nested layers you want). Once you have that pattern, you can decorate the different layers in another program, like InkScape.

I’m happy to share that scad program with others, if anyone wants it. I just have to figure out how to share a file (other than a picture).

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Your boxes look great, I find that a design process where the tedious parts are streamlined/automated works the best. I also have used OpenSCAD extensively. The annoying part for me is switching between programs to add various embellishments to a design. I imagine that utilizing the camera on the glowforge make make it possible to cut out a box first and then add design features later, either through a new cut file or drawing directly on a precut pieces.

For sharing OpenSCAD files thingiverse has a customizer that will allow you to pass parameters in a widget. Also OpenJSCAD is very similar to OpenSCAD, but it supports passing a file on the url, parameters, and dxf output.
–Troy

It seems to me that this would be the way to go if one were to be selling lots of boxes of the same size, or boxes designed with interchangeable modular parts. Then you could have a stockpile of box sides, and customize them as needed, as people place orders.

This thread will hopefully be the perfect outlet for my New Year’s resolution to see more projects all the way through! I’ve decided to use the timeframe as a week-long design charette to make a new project for each challenge, staring out simple and hopefully becoming more complex with each week. In the end, they’ll all go together as a sort of ‘basics kit’ for when my glowforge arrives- cut files that will let me explore how to work with and maximize all of the 'forge’s features.

So, week 1: a book box! I recently received my reward from a successfully-funded Kickstarter campaign for Noveltea Tins- a metal tea tin shaped like a book (complete with tea-inspired puns of famous novels). Since I now have a metal book box, I figured, why not try to make a wooden one?

Designed to be built with 1/8" wood, complete with basic finger joints, a living hinge, and sliding locks that sandwich the front side:

I left the front cover blank for now, figuring that anyone grabbing the cut files could play around with engraving their own design. I plan on using my box as a memento holder for a study abroad trip, so I’m going to engrave one of my sketches from the trip on the cover. :slightly_smiling:

book box_cut sheet_01.AI (47.3 KB)
book box_cut sheet_01.pdf (19.0 KB)
book box_cut sheet_02.AI (53.9 KB)
book box_cut sheet_02.pdf (23.4 KB)

Some note on the files:
-illustrator files are saved as CS5.
-no tolerances have been built in for kerf.
-as stated above, the design was made with 1/8" thick material in mind.
-the solid black rectangle on the cover cut sheet is engraved on the FLIP SIDE of the cover, used as a notch to help align the inside face of the cover with the top edge of the box.
-I may end up updating the cut sheets once I get the chance to test them out on an actual laser cutter!

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That is a lot of fun… great work @steph_

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Super cool! One quick observation - the latches seem like they’d be liable to break, since they’re very small hooks. I really like the clever mechanism, though. Perhaps adding a third, detached inverted-L between the two that are there, with all three laminated together? That would give you a bunch of extra strength from the glue + the tripled up thickness.

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That is a great idea! Love the woodbookbox. Dan’s idea is also great to strengthen that latch. And I was thinking if you cut out a U shape from the top and bottom (the ‘pages’ part) you will be able to use a piece of elastic to keep the latch shut. This helps a lot when the latches are not snug enough to friction grip the lid.

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Yeah, I’m thinking some extra adjustment will have to be made once I’m able to laser cut it! Can’t wait until all that involves is walking across my room and hitting a button :smiley:

I like the elastic idea! I have an old journal I bought years ago that has leather cords attached to either sides of the cover that you can tie together the keep the book closed- may end up playing around with that as well!