Laser Cut Storage Box - Senior Project

Challenge: For student to design a storage box, using the laser cutter.

Background: Our senior school students take part in what is called DPE once a week.  This allows them to focus on a particular subject including a focus on producing a project using the school laser cutter.

This storage box, shown left, was produced by a student in one day.    There were a series of instructional videos that were created by a teacher.   These had instructions for the students to follow, allowing them to complete the process independently but also allowing the student to introduce a degree of personalisation of the design, as some of the features could be modified without causing significant problem to the creation of the unit process.  This box is intended as an introductory task.   Followers of this blog will recognise that the boxes, which were also decorated  and sold as part of our school market day.

Once the process was completed (five minutes) the student was then required to take the individual pieces that made the box and glue them together with wood glue.   The wood used in this instance was 5mm MDF bamboo.   The box was then given time to set/dry and was complete within four hours of the project starting.

Level of Difficulty: Medium.   While this was completed independently it was completed by a senior student.  The senior students at our school are Y7/8 so twelve and thirteen.  This would be challenging for younger students, also of note that SketchUp was used so this requires a laptop.  

Timeframe: Five minutes for the laser cutting, while the entire project was four hours but this was related to the fact that the project needed to be glued, have the glue set and have the box complete.

Size: The dimensions of the box was 80mm across the front and all the rest of the sides.   The height was likewise 80mm as was the depth.

Next Steps for the student/What we would do differently: The obvious next follow up is to decorate the box by spray painting.  This project is designed as an introductory task, and the intention is to use this as a starting point, which will allow the students to apply the knowledge and think how they might create their own individualised boxes and projects.   As noted the time of the printing of the box parts is five minutes, which when compared to 3D Printing a box of this size which would be measured in hours.   The student will be working on a range of laser cut designs in the following weeks which will be detailed on this blog.