Time in a Box With Vetric Cut2D

In this Instructable I will relate to you how I made this elegant little box out of an off cut I had left over from another project, the wood is spruce soft wood, but the box could be made out of any type of wood.

I haven't on this occasion made screen shots of the sketch using Vetric as its pretty much the same process for all my Vetric designs.

For this project you will need an off cut of wood 200 x 100 x 20mm a pair of concealed hinges and a clock insert,

I already had the clock insert but they are available online for a few £'s / $.

The box is made on a CNC machine and the design and text is lasered.

Please ensure you have the correct Personal Protective Equipment to hand.

Eye protection for both CNC and Laser operations.

Ear protection.

Dust mask rated for the work you are carrying out.

Time waits for no man.... so lets get started.

Timber off cut 200mm x 100mm x 20mm whatever wood you have available.

Clock insert.

Concealed hinges x 2

sand paper or sander.

small magnets x 4

Boiled Linseed Oil

CNC Machine

Laser

In Vetric Cut2D, the initial job is to set up the dimensions and starting point(Zero) of our work piece, 20omm Wide 100mm Height and Thickness 20.02 with the dimensions in place we can now move onto our sketch.

Select the centre square tab and make a rectangle 70mm x 60mm make a 10mm radius on each corner with the fillet tab.

We will concentrate on making the lid of the box for now and we can either mirror to the adjacent side for the base or copy and paste.

We can now make 10.1mm holes for the concealed hinges as shown, these need to be relatively close to the edge of the box as the gap when fully opened is 5.5mm so in this case it was 6mm to the centre of the hinge and 20mm in from the edge of the rectangle, you can make the first circle and mirror horizontally for the second.

We now create a pocket for the clock insert, in this case its 32.7mm so we create a circle to this dimension.

That is the lid sketch complete, we now mirror this sketch creating both the lid and the base sketches, the only thing to do is enlarge the circle, this is to accommodate clock bezel which is slightly wider, I made this 45mm.

Sketches are complete we can now move onto the Toolpaths.

The first operation will be to select pocket, and highlighting the 4 circles for the hinges we make the depth 12mm to accommodate the hinges, Router bit is 6mm 2 flute flat end mill.

Calculate, Review and rename.

The next cutting operation is also a pocket and select both circles to house the clock insert, the insert depth is approximately 5mm so I made the depth 6mm, the End mill stays the same.

Calculate, Review and rename.

The final cutting operation is a profile cut to cut out the lid and base, depth is 20.04mm End mill remains the same and we select Tabs to hold the Lid and Base in position after cutting.

Now all that remains is to cut the Tabs to release.

We can now mark out the holes for the magnets 4mm diameter and 2mm depth and drill them to suit.

Sand the Lid and Base as required.

We can now carry out the Laser operations, I just opted for a verse I had seen and thought it was apt for this box.

Next we can install the Hinges and Magnets.

Hinges are pretty much straight forward to install, align, push in and tighten the little grub screws.

Magnets just press in, I never used any glue to hold in place as they were a snug fit.

That completes this little box, could be used for travel or bedside etc etc.

I hope you enjoyed this Instructable and thanks for looking.