Laser Cut Art Box

I am taking an Art Class and needed a box to store all my art supplies in. I wanted something more personal than a plastic tub, so I designed a toolbox-style carrier with a tray that can be taken out. The hinges and latch are all made from wood as well. I used .02 inch thick plywood and cut it all on a laser cutter at TechShop.

I wanted the box to hold all my supplies and contain a top tray that could hold all the most commonly used items.

I came up with this design which was simple and fairly easy to assemble. I designed all of it in Illustrator and didn't use any box making program... I just set my grid size to .2 (my wood thickness) or 5 boxes per inch and made each notch 2 boxes

It took 3 sheets of 18" x 20" ply. The 3 .ai files are attached

The tray was the first part of the design and I created all the holes/designs for looks and to keep is light.

The tray sits on some extra pieces I added underneath after the fact to support the tray. (Not in .ai files)

The hinges are a simple design I came up with using a 1/4" dowel as the hinge pin. When I first tried them, they were a little tight, but after a little use, they're perfect.

The latch is similar to the hinges. The same pieces with the exception of the long piece (handle) seen in the second photo. The handle is glued to the dowel and to slide it back and forth to lock/unlock the lid. There are 2 spacers which allow the handle to be able to be stored in the locked or unlocked position.

FYI my .ai file only has one spacer in it. A second needs to be duplicated.

I used carpenters wood glue for this project. If I was doing it again, I would put the wood glue on, but then quick secure all the joints with superglue so I wouldn't need to clamp it so many ways for so long.

As of these pictures, it still needs some final sanding and maybe a coat of finish.

Enjoy