Very pretty!
If you can tig, you can braze.
Just use a silicon bronze filler rod, and flow it in there. You don’t need to worry much about strength or penetration here since a little bit of bronze on those box joints will hold forever.
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That is really neat looking. How heavy is that thing?
I especially like the lid-strengthening/brace/press-fit insert (there is probably a correct term that I don’t know). It’s a shame that it has to hide inside the box!
And now… the more I look at it… I want a steel Mr MeeSeeks box!
Guess I will have to wait until I get my Glowforge and make one from laser-cut wood instead.
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That really is very nice steel work!
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Thanks Josh! I have done some tig welding stainless. I’ll talk to our supply guy about getting some bronze filler rods.
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Thanks JBV! I’ll throw it on our shipping scale tomorrow. It’s built out of 1/8" plate. Feels nice a solid.
My first idea was for a basic smaller square. Then I thought it’d bee fun to add a bit of a surprise to the inside.
I had to google a meeseeks box. Definitely could be done with similar techniques.
Thanks @printolaser! I’ve been around a lot of metal work but haven’t done much myself. All the credit really needs to go to the fun toys (tools) in our shop and to @kigster for this cool program. I was really impressed with how well this fit together and little effort it took to square up.
I cleaned all of the pieces with a wire wheel mounted to a bench grinder. It gave it a nice semi polished/burnished look. I noticed it “brightened up” with more force so I tried that on all of edges.
On the next one I’ll use a tig to tack it together to reduce spatter on the inside of the box.
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For brazing (also known as hard soldering) I found it easier to use the flux coated rod. A white borax base coating that eliminates the step of fluxing the joint.
Using a sanding disc, or grinder ( depending on the desired finish texture) to clean any bronze off of the surface will fill the seams with a nice contrast of gold fill.
That would be very sharp looking!
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Great job on the box. I want to do the same thing and tweek the case to not have a lid.
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Thanks
Here’s a couple of the next concepts I’m working on. I made another box that fits just inside my first box. Then I copied/mirrored the first box to make a lid. I’m also working on a stainless steel floor drain box with grate using these same techniques. I started dropping the box pieces into Sketchup to proof fitment since I’m tweaking them in ACAD. I find myself so eager to go cut them out that I’m missing details. It’s fairly quick/easy to piece these together and spin them around to verify things.
I know these joinery techniques aren’t anything new but I’m just getting started with our plasma cutter so it’s fun to geek out on it a bit. Can’t wait for the GF so I can work with more materials!
@jbv My first box scaled at 5.2 lbs.
@printolaser Thanks for the tips!
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Oh, thank you.
Reviving this old post because @kigster deserves some appreciation for his work. I checked out three of the online box generators at Makercase, Box Designer and MakeaBox. The big box is the first one I did with maker case using full 1/4" heavy cardboard. I put in a kerf allowance but it is pretty tight. Holds together without assistance. The others are a bit loose so next time with cardboard I’ll add a bit more kerf allowance. So cool to get these boxes. Just add some craft paper to the exterior and you have some cool blocks.
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Even better…you could make really cool gift packaging out of that…nuke a little fancy design onto one or more faces with a defocused engrave, or stamp it with the many stamps left over from other projex, and away we go…
No more wrapping paper. Yaaaaaay! ( I plan to use that box generator a lot when it comes.)
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Really gives me a great idea. Print two boxes, one bigger than the other leaving one side off and no tabs. One slips over the other. Great gift box.
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I would think - make larger ones for a family picnic. outdoor party, etc. and turn them into Yahtzee cubes (or similar dice game)… at the end of the night you could use 'em in the campfire if they served their purpose (made out of cardboard).
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hiya - I love that you did that and have been playing on it. Is there a way to do sections? I painfully created a sectioned box using illustrator 3 compartments across and 2 high and then saved as a PDF and some of the lines just won’t render in the glowforge so short of me sitting with a TINY hacksaw I dunno how I’m going to do my secret squirrel Christmas project. :(feeling a bit like a dummy)
There are a handful of links to several box generator programs listed in the Designing with 2D Vector Software Matrix.
A few of those will do sectioned boxes, you just need to look around a bit. (and scroll down.)
The Inkscape tabbed box maker that goes in laser tools is excellent for this application. It has many variations. You can do section and you can have one side not notched or two sides not notched.
Also this site has quite a variation in box making ability. You can also download the code and run it as a local server.
http://www.festi.info/boxes.py/index.html
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You are my hero! thats the most brilliant box gen I’ve seen!!!
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I wish this one was working! I liked it better than any other one I’ve used!
I just used the box generator and it created a beautiful PDF. I will modify the file in Illustrator to add wall mounting brackets. Thank you kindly for sharing.