One for the body of the box, where the finger joints should be quite tight. The Blue lines are where the laser will cut in order to cut down to the required Red lines. In this case, the Kerf has been set to a ridiculously large value so you can see the result. You need to consider that if you cut exactly on the outline of box that you wish to cut, then because of the width of the burnt cut, you box will be smaller than required. Kerf is half the width of the laser cut line. The program needs to know the correct Kerf. If you have no experience, don't worry, you just have to change a few numbers and a couple of words (True & False - yes those two words) here and there. If you have any experience in computer coding, Python is dead-easy to learn. The advantage of this programming approach to graphics is that you can change the parameters in the code (say length, breadth and width) and get get the plans for a different box. So if you don't own a Mac, read no further. There are open source versions of Nodebox available, but these are much more complicated to use for straight geometrical drawing. SADLY the Nodebox version I use is only available to run on Apple Macs running OSX. 5 points from from (x,y) coordinates = (1cm,0) to (10cm,5cm) then from (2cm,0) to (10cm,5cm) But unlike the standard graphics programs like Illustrator, you have to write code to say what you want to do. If you own a Mac, there is a superb FREE graphics application called Nodebox, using the Python programming language (easy to understand), that allows you to draw ultra fast ultra precise 2-D graphics of any complexity you like and output the results to a standard. I wanted to have boxes, with hinges and a bit more control that Jon's web-based application. Inspired by Jon Hollander's I decided that I would like to improve on the idea of laser cut boxes. THEY ALSO ASSUME YOU HAVE ACCESS TO A LASER CUTTER AND KNOW HOW TO OPERATE IT = SORRY, THESE INSTRUCTIONS ONLY FOR APPLE MAC USERS.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |