In the two years waiting for my Glowforge I never told my wife about it. That made the delays a lot easier to deal with. But, when the big box showed up, she was a bit skeptical. To really show its value I needed it to do something useful.

For a year or so now we’ve had a broken outdoor light fixture. Since it was in the shape of a box I figured it would be a perfect project for Glowforge to come to the rescue!

Now, I’ve never made a box, but had previously downloaded an Inkscape plugin and gave that a shot. I did some testing and found it a bit limited (I needed a box with an open end) and it had some issues with the kerf calculation (or I was confused).

So I did some searching and found an updated plugin that was perfect.

I started out with proofgrade draftboard trying to calculate kerf printing 1" squares etc. I needed the box to be snap fit as I didn’t have any glue on hand for the PG frosted acrylic I intended to use. After some trial and error making mini boxes in both draft and acrylic I came to the conclusion I was ready!

Taking the leap of faith I printed the box I hoped would work!

To my delight it all fit together perfectly! Nice tight fit! Now time to try installing.

It all fit perfectly on the first try. It looks like the Glowforge is here to stay!