• building the box

    Christoph Gerneth • 12/07/2015 at 15:27 • 0 comments

    At the beginning, we need to think about the dimensions for this build. I wanted to keep the box as compact as possible but flexible from the inside dimensions to add more stuff later. I figured out that i would need at least 9x10x8 cm for the clock's mechanic and about 12x4x8 cm for the raspberry/display-combination. With this dimensions, I fired up Inkscape and used the great plugin called "tabbed box maker".

    The Tabbed Box Maker asks for the inner dimensions of the box, the 'tab size' which is the length of the joints and the material thickness. It generated a bunch of paths:

    These paths are not connected, so i grouped them first. Then I added the windows for the display, the clock and the knob for adjusting the time. A 'inner frame' for the display was cutted and glued at the inside of the box for holding the display in place. Last, but not least: 2 holes on the back of the box provide terminals for the 230V power cord and the headphone jack. The different colors are lasercut mappings: red is mapped to cut and green is mapped to mark, which is basically cutting with less power. The result is a crisp line in the material. very pretty...

    I had to split the part in 2 separate jobs, because it didn't fit on one sheet of MDF.

    OK, time to send it to the laser cutter (FYI: it's an epilog 30w laser)


    tadaaa... now we have a box....