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Workshop Basics: Laser cut enclosures

SCHOOL OF MAKING

akers and hackers love to build

a wide variety of projects. These

creations may range from the fun,

interesting, and weird, to the serious,

practical, and useful. They may be

intended for music creation, gaming,

education, assistive technology, communications,

holiday decoration, media streaming, puzzles, theatre

props, and – well, the sky’s the limit! These wonderful

projects are often made of electronic components,

mechanical parts, motors, microcontrollers, buttons,

switches, dials, speakers, LEDs, keypads, batteries,

displays, and even small embedded computers.

Among this infinite, delightful variety, nearly all have

one thing in common – once the prototyping is done,

and the project is ready to be deployed and used, they

need a case or enclosure to bring all of the elements

together, to provide some protection, and even to give

form and layout to their inputs and outputs.

Given the variety and creativity of your projects,

why settle for an off-the-shelf, generic project box,

with holes drilled and cut into it, when you can build

your own case that’s customised for your exact needs?

Making the case for cases

Laser cut enclosures

M

With access to a laser cutter at your local hackerspace,

or by using an online vendor such as Ponoko.com

(which has local hubs in a number of regions), you

can build exactly what you need to suit your project

enclosure needs.

The high precision and minimal kerf (the gap of

material lost along a cut) of laser cutting means that

you can build joints and features to accommodate your

components with very tight tolerances. You can design

your enclosure using free, open source vector drawing

tools, such as Inkscape. There are also online, browser-

based box generators such as makercase.com to get

you started.

Including components is easy. Add a proper circle to

your design and you’ve got a perfect, press-fit opening

for an arcade button!

THREE METHODS

There are a number of ways to design and construct

a laser cut enclosure. Many of these methods are

adaptations of traditional joinery techniques used in

woodworking or other types of flat stock fabrication.

With certain adaptations, these techniques work well

as laser cut designs, and can be made more quickly

and easily than their wood shop counterparts, which

require many repetitions of highly accurate cuts.

FINGER JOINTS

The finger joint (a.k.a. box joint) is

possibly the most popular technique

in laser cut joinery. It is perfect for

joining two pieces at 90 degree

angles, is strong, and creates clean,

flush joints.

The key to making finger joints is

creating interlocking tabs with a cut

depth equal to the thickness of the

material stock you are joining. This is

because the pieces you’ll join will be at

right angles, so the tab of part A will fit

into the gap in part B without falling short

or protruding beyond the face of part B.

Above

The different

joint types lead

to different

looks in the

finished product

John Park

John Park is a maker

who builds creative

technology project

videos and tutorials

for Adafruit Industries.

He’s the former host

of the Make: TV show

on American Public

Television, and a

20-year veteran of CG

animation at Disney,

Sony, and other

animation studios.

@johnedgarpark

WORKSHOP BASICS