I made this laser cur box in product design.

During my design process I went through a hurdle or 2 and finally got my end product. The first problem that I encountered was that the laser cutter couldn’t cut diagonally so I had to change my design. I changed it by making it into a straight line so that was a easy problem to solve. I also didn’t know what my pattern should be. I changed it many times and I finally knew what my design would be when I started Fusion.

When I went into fusion I also faced many challenges, the first challenge that I faced was what size I wanted my box. At first, I wanted my box to be 60’75 but I made my paper prototype and after I looked at it I thought that it was too small, so I changed the size of my box to 75’85. Next, I decided on the pattern and choose a flower pattern with a butterfly on the lid. The pattern I drew by hand and it had many points, which later caused my computer to crash many times. I later learned that I could use a circular pattern to draw the flower and since fusion crashed so much I made the rest of my flower pattern when I used Light Burn. At first, I sketched the butterfly by hand but it was uneven on the other side and was wonky so I used the mirror tool to mirror it in the center of the butterfly. After I drew my pattern I faced my biggest problem yet. Each time that I opened Fusion I created a new sketch each time I opened my file. You are not supposed to create a new file each time rather you are suppose to edit the same sketch each time you open Fusion and add or delete a part of the sketch. If you are like me and made more than 1 sketch then you have to copy and paste the rest of the sketches in one sketch which takes forever to do. When I went into light burn I copy and pasted the flower into all the parts I wanted where the flowers to be. Since Light Burn isn’t as complex as Fusion it didn’t crash.

Growth –

By doing this project I learned how to import a picture into Fusion, I also learned never to make a sketch every time that I go into Fusion to add to the project. I was going to add a hinge to my box but when I went to the fab lab Mr.Diego showed me that you didn’t need a hinge and he drilled a thin piece of metal to connect my lid to the base of my box so that I didn’t need a hinge. I learned that you don’t always need a hinge to open and close a box and that there are other ways.

By doing this project it expanded my design abilities and I leaned lots of stuff during the journey. I learned never to make more than one sketch in fusion, how to import a picture, and lots more things about the different apps and the laser cutter.