Newbie Help

Hi! I just received my GF and I need to get a couple projects out the door quickly and don’t have a lot of time for trial and error/learning curve. Can anyone point me in the direction of someone I can hire to write a few files for me and explain how to import them into the GF dashboard to print?

Just post up your requirements and I’m sure people will either point you in the right direction or help you out.

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Ok thanks Kanati!

I need 4 sizes of boxes that I can make on Makercase.com but I need a few tweaks to make it so there is a lid that slides out:

  1. I need the front panel height reduced to allow for the lid to slide over it.
  2. The front panel also needs a little cutout (like half of a US Quarter maybe) so that the user can insert their finger and grab the lid to pull it.
  3. The two side panels and the possibly the back panel will need to have instructions from the GF to engrave a groove for the lid to slide into.

:slightly_smiling_face:

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This is the part of your request you’re going have problems with. Depending on the wood or acrylic you’re engraving you can’t really dial in a depth without a lot of testing. For a quick fix you might consider building a box that fits perfectly into your box, providing a lip that the lid can slide on. It uses more material, but ultimately will A) actually work and B) can look pretty good.

Check out this box posted previously:

The beginning of that post has a link to the finished project.

This one uses a living hinge top, but your top would be simpler it sounds like, and would use the same type of side insert, and have a top with a cutout to see your sliding top, then just a slot on one of the sides and you’ve got something that could probably look quite nice and operate how you wanted.

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You mean like these boxes I’ve made?

I’ve moved away from doing these kinds of lids because they fail more often than they work, which could just be me. What’s your reason behind wanting the sliding lid vs. a lid that sits on top?

There are two really great ways that I use for lids that sit on top that work well.

And there are multiple other ways like metal hinges and living hinges and loads more.

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That’s almost exactly what I was going for, except I was going to put the hole on the front panel so you could sort of grab the lid by pinching the lid…hopefully my drawing explains better than my words! I thought this look would be a really nice design presentation but I am open to other options…the more important thing is getting up and running with production as I have a lot of holiday boxes to make by next week! (I planned on being ahead of the curve and ordered my GF a long time ago, but GF had to send me 3 machines before I got one that worked correctly so that ate all my experimentation time.)

I’ve seen other people do the “box in box” to solve the sliding lid, but yes, that would almost double the amount of material and would make assembly time a lot longer. I need 4 sizes but I’ll probably be making 50 boxes! I was thinking of using 1/4" birch plywood because it’s easy to source from Home Depot but I’m open to any material that I can get locally that will work and be cost effective.

I love the look of the living hinge and was strongly considering something like that but I wasn’t sure if it would be very easy to open and close, and I wasn’t sure I could easily find a way to make my custom sizes.

What are the four sizes you want?

Sliding lid is a nice presentation and I think you should definitely try them out, but if you want to get things done quickly you’re better off doing some simpler things first. Here’s examples of boxes I’ve done with the lids sitting on top. They are loose enough to pop off easily but not super loose that they just wiggle all over the place.




Then there are the ones with the box tops, like this. Which does take up a little more material, but if you’re making them short enough it won’t be that much more than making a regular lid. And it might be kind of cute because then you wrap that with a ribbon bow or something.

If you can give me the sizes of the boxes you need, I would be happy to make these files and then share them with you in the Free Files section. I could do the sliding lid, the lid sitting on top, and a box top lid. Let me know your thoughts and whatnot.

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https://www.etsy.com/search?q=laser%20template%20drawer%20box

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Wow! Those are so cute! I think I agree with you to just keep it easy this season and do the lid sitting on top…I’ll spend all next year learning the machine and getting fancy!

The sizes are:

  1. 9.5" x 6.75" x 4.5"tall
  2. 9.5" x 6.75" x 2.75"tall
  3. 11.5" x 8" x 5.25"tall
  4. 4.5" x 3.5" x 2"tall

Thank you so much!!

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Thank you! I love the inspiration on Etsy!

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Etsy is full of laser ready files you can buy. Most are already in SVG and they are not very expensive

Here are some of my favorites:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/dolodom?ref=pr2018_faveshops
https://www.etsy.com/shop/VectorPainter?ref=pr2018_faveshops

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Hope this helps you along! Once you’re past the holidays, just spend time messing around with your design app of choice, browse places with files for free or for purchase, and let us know how we can help. I’ll be updating that thread with the box top lids and the sliding lids later when I have time, but for now these sitting lids should help.

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Maybe I’m just a paranoid stickler for the rules, and they’re just boxes, but you might want to include/say that people can use them for projects that they are planning on selling? I assume that’s amanda3’s intent

Well they are just boxes haha, anybody can make them on MakerCase.com. the lids are just how I always do them.

So yes, to everybody, it’s fine, just don’t try to sell the file. That wouldn’t be cool.

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They’ll be used for holiday gift sets that I will be gifting friends and family.

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wow, that’s some dedication - one year I just used paper bags lol

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