"Hinged Lid Box" SVG Generator

[tobyschachman]

@federico and I collaborated on this new Cuttle template.

You can customize it to whatever size and material thickness you want, then download the resulting SVG here:

Hinged Lid Box

@federico also recorded a video tutorial showing how to use the template, download the SVG, cut it on GF, and assemble the pieces.

Hinged Lid Box - Laser Cutting Tutorial

The hinge mechanism is fully integrated, so no additional hardware is required. You assemble three sides, put the lid in place, then the final side locks everything together.

The pieces are press-fit, so no glue is required.

Below is the box @federico made in the video. It’s about the size of a mint tin (3.7" x 2.4" x 1") and tuned for GF Light Plywood (0.118" material thickness). You can right click > save as if you just want this exact box:

We’ve been posting a bunch of free Cuttle templates to the GF forum (Keychain Generator, Emoji Keychain, Name Snowflake, Basic Boxes, etc). For this template we’re trying something new. It will be free for two weeks (until Feb 1, 2023) and then it will become a premium template (you will need a Cuttle Pro membership to generate new boxes from it).

If you are curious how this was designed, here is a behind-the-scenes screen recording I made for @federico when we started this project. Basically Cuttle is a vector editor (like Illustrator or Inkscape) that lets you define parameters (width, height, material thickness, etc) and then use those values throughout your design. When you change the parameters, your design automatically updates. You can then quickly make lots of variations on your design by just putting in different parameters.

Hope this box design comes in handy for you!

[fleckrj]

This is great. I make a lot of hinged boxes, but I have to design the hinge and lid manually. This will simplify things immensely. Thank you for sharing.

[tobyschachman]

Glad it will simplify things for you!

Are there any other box types that you make a lot of? Where being able to adjust the dimensions and material thickness like this would be useful? We want to add more box variations to our template library.

[CapnMike]

Winner, winner; chicken dinner! I just finished making a 10” by 5” by 3” box using 1/4” alder for our local Library’s MakerSpace patrons (the lid says it all). So easy to use (and adjust). Cuttle is an indispensable tool in my crafting tool bag.

[jeanneleigh]

This is great! Thanks so much for designing and sharing - looking forward to making one of these!

[tobyschachman]

@CapnMike This came out great! Thanks for sharing the picture!

[dwardio]

@tobyschachman

Are there any other box types that you make a lot of?

One option I’d like to see for this particular template would being able to add feet at the corners with height and width being parametric.

Just tested the template here:

Computer glasses box

Wanted to try out the parametric hinged box template in Cuttle, so I made a box for my Computer glasses out of light cherry ply… [image] I like working with light PG ply, except for one thing – since it has a wood core instead of MDF, it warps like crazy (at least here in Colorado – YMMV, of course). https://community.glowforge.com/t/hinged-lid-box-svg-generator/121731

Worked well, but after measuring the light cherry PG with digital calipers in 4 places, the average thickness setting still yielded loose-tabs that required glue to hold it together. ¯\(ツ)/¯

[bwente]

What was the kerf set at? You might have to adjust for the thinner material.

[dwardio]

As per their video, I left it at the default .007" To dial it in, sure - I’d adjust the kerf…

[bwente]

If you wanted “feet”, you could add a rectangle the existing sides.

I made a gap component that I used on my phone stand. Copy it from that and paste it in.

[dwardio]

Yes, that was my suggestion to Toby. I know how to do that and have added them to my own designs any number of times, which is why I suggested it as an enhancement to their template.

[tobyschachman]

@dwardio Thanks for the foot suggestion! I agree we should add this option to our boxes. And thank you @bwente for the foot solution — looks good!

In this template, the material thickness is mostly important for getting the sizing of the hole for the hinge correct.

For the fit of the finger joints, the kerf parameter will determine how tight the fit is. It really depends on your laser. For me, .007 inches is a tight fit — I need to use a mallet to click the pieces together. For @federico, it’s fairly loose and he’ll sometimes use .008 inches.

The higher you set the kerf value, the tighter the fit. I’d definitely try .008 inches (maybe even .009 if it really felt loose) next time you use PG Light Ply and see if that’s better.

I’d also be curious if anyone else has had issues with the Cuttle default kerf being too tight or too loose…

[mark14]

these are great. I am a huge cuttle fan.

[tobyschachman]

Thanks @mark14! Glad you are enjoying Cuttle