Making Laser Cut Boxes: Creating Your Design

Measurements and Units

                

When designing a laser-cut box, you need to have a piece of material in mind.  Before starting, carefully measure the height, width and thickness of the material you plan on using.  The thickness of the material is the most important.  You’ll want to use a set of callipers to measure it as accurately as you can, down to the 100th of an inch.

For the purposes of this tutorial, consider using a piece of plywood that’s 18” x 24”, and 0.20” thick.  18”x24” is a very common size for laser beds.  If you’d prefer to use metric units, then you can use 450mm x 600mm x 5mm.

For the height and width dimensions, it’s better to be slightly under than slightly over because you need to make sure that your material is able to sit flat on the laser bed and not have to rest on the border, because that would prevent your material from sitting level.

Create an Illustrator Document

Create a document that’s the height and width of your material.  Set up the dimensions in a landscape orientation.  That is to say, your width should be 24” and the height should be 18”.  This matches most laser cutters, and you get to see more on your screen.

It’s also best practice to set the color mode to RGB.  This is a requirement for some laser cutters because they apply power and speed settings by RGB color.  

Next, find the Guides & Grid section in the Preferences menu.  This is the most important part about setting up your document.  When properly set up, each grid will correspond to a cube of material that is 1 unit thick on each side.  This allows you to seamlessly design things that will fit together in 3-dimensions like tiny Lego bricks.

Set the grid settings so that the "Gridline every" value divided by the "Subdivisions" value is equal to your material thickness.  In this example, I've set it to 1" divided by 5, which equals 0.20".  If you had 0.19" material, you would set it 0.95" divided by 5.  If you were using millimeters, you'd set it to 10mm divided by 2, which equals 5mm, or 25mm divided by 5 which still equals 5mm.  You can use any number of Subdivisions as you like, the result just has to equal the material thickness.

In the View menu, enable both View Grid and Snap to Grid.  This will make sure that all the lines that you draw will fall on the grid you defined in the settings menu.

Create a Rough Template

In order to create the template, you need to decide how big this box is going to be.  You'll need to choose a height, width and depth.  For this tutorial consider a box that is 14" wide x 10" high, and  3" deep.  Once you've created this one, it's very simple to adjust the sizes to your liking.

Using the rectangle tool, create a rectangle that is 20" x 10" and place it in the center of the document.  This is the width + twice the depth x the height.

Create another rectangle that is 14" x 16" and place it in the center of the document.  This is the width x the height + twice the depth.

Use the select all function and change the color to light blue, because you'll want to be able to tell the difference between this and the lines you'll be creating after this.

Your document should now look something like this:

Take a moment to note that you can see how that the box in the middle is 14" x 10" and the sides will flip up and be 3" deep.

Now use the Layers dialog to rename this layer as "Rough Template," then lock it, and create a new layer to continue your work.  You will not need to modify this layer, but will use it to visually line up your remaining work.

Download Sample File: laserCutBox-1.ai

Create Box Joints

Change your drawing color to red.  In laser cutting, red signifies a line that will cut through the material.

Zoom into the bottom left corner and draw a line that is 4 grids long, then on the right side of that draw lines one grid up, one grid to the right, then one grid down.  It should look like this:

Select all of these lines and use the Group command in the Object menu.  This will keep these pieces grouped together.  Let's call this piece a "single box joint."  

Use your Arrow Keys to move the single box joint up and to the left until it touches your blue line.  Like this:

Again, select the single box joint, and use the copy function in the edit menu.  Then use the paste function in the edit menu to paste another copy into your document.  Use the arrow keys to move the copy up the first one.  Like this:

Keep pasting in copies, and lining the up to the right hand side until you reach the blue line on the right.  Like this:

Now, using the White Arrow aka the Direct Selection Tool, select the last 3 lines of the single box joint, aka the head, on the right and delete them.  Your document should look like this:

Download Sample File: laserCutBox-2.ai

Now consider the left hand side again, and select the first single box joint, copy it and paste it down.  Using the Object, Transform menu, rotate it by 90 degrees.  Again with the Object, Transform menu, select Reflect, Vertical.  Move this rotated single box joint until it's almost tail touches the tail of the horizontal row of box joints.  You'll leave one grid space to allow the left side panel to rotate up correctly.

Your document should now look something like this:

Copy and paste the vertical single box joint going up until you reach the blue line.  Then delete the last 3 lines just like you did on the horizontal row.  Like this (I've increased the line weight here to make the screenshots easier to view).

Now use the White Arrow to select the bottom node on the row of vertical box joints, and extend the line down by one grid.  This will lock in that space that you need for the side panel to have room to sit on the base.  Do the same for the top node and move it up by one grid.  Your document should look like this:

Now use the Black Arrow to select the very first single box joint that you created, and copy it back into the document.  Use the Transform menu to rotate it by 180 degrees and move it so that the end of the tail is touching the bottom left corner of the blue center box.  Like this:

Now copy this 2 more times, extending to the left and cut the head off of the last one, this is the bottom side of the left panel.  Like this:

Copy the bottom side of the left panel from the last step, and rotate it by 90 degrees using the Object, Transform menu. and place it so that it sits between the bottom side of the center panel, and the blue line at the bottom side of the bottom panel.  Like this:

Copy the bottom side of the left panel, and paste it back in.  Rotate it by 180 degrees, and move it up to the top side of the left panel.  Make sure you've got that single grid's worth of left side of the center panel sticking up above the top side of the left panel.

Like this:

Copy the left side of the bottom panel, paste it back in, rotate it 180 degrees, and shift it over to the right side of the center panel.

Now draw a line to connect the outer edges of the left side and bottom panels.

You've completed the left and bottom panels.  Copy them to make the top and right panels.  To do this, select all of the red lines, copy and paste them back into the document, and rotate that by 180 degrees.  

Align the pieces so that the corners touch.

Now you might be saying that the red lines don't quite match up with our rough template.  And you'd be right.  You could make some adjustments to get back to the original designed size.  But then the joints wouldn't be as nicely even as you have them there.  And I did say it was a rough template, right?  So rough, that you should go ahead and hide that layer by clicking the eyeball next to it in the Layers box.

Now that we've finished the outline of the box, select it all, and modify the stroke width to 0.001" so that the laser cutter will read this as a line that it will cut instead of a piece of raster art to etch.

Name this layer "Box Cut Lines" and click the lock icon so that you can't accidental modify it.

Don't forget to save your work.

Optional Next Steps

Maybe this looks like a carrying tray to you.  If so, cut some rounded rectangles to add some holes to act as handles.

Add some artwork to make it distinctively your own.  A neat effect is to have the artwork continue up the sides.  As all the pieces are all symmetrical, the artwork can be the inside or the outside, depending on how you build it.  Or etch both sides.  All that etching might take a long time.  Try using a low-power vector cut to quickly cover a large area.

Create a lid by simply cutting out a rectangle exactly the same size as the bottom piece, then another one that's one grid size smaller on the left, right, top, and bottom.  Glue the two rectangles together and you've got an instant lid.  If you etch some registration marks on the larger piece it will make the gluing job easier.