![]() The nice thing about Glowforge is that it comes with its own interface, which has a lot of useful features like auto-focus, presets for different materials, as well as a camera inside the cutting space which allows you to place your images exactly where you want them on the material. If cost is a bigger factor than speed, then that option may be enough, but if you’re doing a lot of cutting then one of the other models may be worth the investment. The lower end model has decent cutting ability but is relatively slow. Glowforge created something special with its user-friendly home laser cutting systems, but it comes at a cost, ranging from $2500-$6000. They're not particularly beginner-friendly and I believe they only run with PCs. The downside of not being local means very limited support, and these machines often require a higher technical knowledge (or a lot of research) to maintain. These can range anywhere from around $400 to thousands of dollars, and are considered pretty affordable when compared to American made machines such as from Epilog Laser (which are great quality but are priced in the thousands). Orion Motor Tech is a Chinese brand that makes laser cutters in a wide variety of sizes and power levels. If it's too loose with your material and machine increase it by a little bit (say to 0.008").Engravers - if you don’t actually want to do any cutting and just want to make things look nice, you can get a relatively unobtrusive engraver for $150-$300 (but for many of us makers these are pretty useless.) And if it's too tight reduce it a little bit (say to 0.006") and test it again. This means it's good to start by trying the suggested kerf compensation amount (0.007 inches) and cut two faces of the box as a test. In practice the actual amount will also vary, and you'll find it mostly via trial and error. In our case we want the fit between the box faces to be not too loose, not too tight.Ĭompensating for this loss of material when cutting is usually done by moving the cut line to roughly match the loss. This loss of material mostly affects projects where you want to fit things together with some precision. With a saw the kerf is very consistent and very close to the actual width of the blade, but with a laser cutter the kerf will vary a lot depending on the interaction of the material, machine, and settings used. Laser cutters also leave a groove when vaporizing materials and this affects the dimensions of the final product. Woodworkers use the term to talk about the size of the groove left by a saw blade. Kerf is a fancy word for the the groove or slit created by cutting or sawing something. Most flat materials like plywood or acrylic are not perfectly consistent in their thickness, so take several measurements and choose a reasonable average.If the material comes with some kind of protective film, remove it before you measure.Pay attention that the jaws of your calipers are parallel to the material.When measuring flat materials for making boxes take these considerations into account: There are some great guides for using caliper's on Instructables like this one or check out this short video. Measuring Material ThicknessĪ pair of calipers is the most common tool used for measuring the thickness of your material. You can sand these down or even make exaggerated versions because they can look kind of cool.Ĭonversely, making them too short actually makes it hard to assemble the box, so err on the side of too big if you can. It means the joints will protrude slightly from the corners. If you make you material thickness parameter a bit more than your actual material, this isn't a big deal. ![]() For really clean looking corners you want to be fairly precise when measuring the thickness of your material. The thickness of your material matters because it determines the length of the interlocking edges.
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