Introduction: Lasercut a Hinged Box for My Watches

The last couple of years, I bought a couple of watches. I didn't have a good place to store them.

A friend of mine is into lasercutting and an idea was born: create your own box to put my watches in.

Supplies

- 2 MDF 3mm plates (600mmx300mm)

- a small hammer

Step 1: Preparation

As this was my first lasercut project ever, I needed to look some things up.

1. What drawing program to use?

I could have gone for any good commercial product (f.i. Adobe Illustrator) but I went for Inkscape.

2. How to draw a box?

Again, not being a 2D or 3D wizard here, I wanted to draw a box in the most efficient way possible (read: lazy).

I found an instructables post called 'The Ultimate Guide to Laser-cut Box Generators' by SparkItUp which was a very very big help.

There was a link to Boxes.py where one can generate boxes (hinged, unhinged), trays, ...

Step 2: Drawing

Besides the generated box by boxes.py, I also added:

  • a logo (because I can)
  • some kind of date (to remind me of this beautiful moment)
  • 4 small cuboids (as part of the hinges; you only need two but having two backups can be worthwile)

Attachments

Step 3: Burn Baby Burn

Step 4: Sandpaper the Parts + Make the Cuboids 'roundish'

The cuboids don't fit the holes of the hinges => sandpaper the corners a bit et voila! It fits now :)

Step 5: Assembly

First assemble the hinges!

1. take the hinge parts (check how they need to be assembled)

2. put the rounded cuboid through the hole

3. fix the hinges in the plate

Continue now with the rest