The second prototype has seen large improvements in fabrication.  Other than the obvious problems, like the box being too small, there have been a few big improvements.

Spot the difference!  The left cutsheet should be missing the upper left hand portion, but that part was not cut because it was too large for the sheet.

On the left is the cut sheet from the previous prototype, and on the right is the cut sheet of the latest prototype.  The latest prototype is actually larger by square inches, but it takes almost half the time to cut!  And there is less waste of material between the parts.  The improvement here was manually aligning pieces to share edges, and then deleting (again, manually) one of the shared edges.  If you do this, deleting the extra edge is very important.  If you don’t the laser will hit it again, and sometimes create a very small “peel” of plastic between the two laser lines.  This piece of plastic is very thin, and will be insulated by air on post sides, which will cause it to catch on fire!  So delete the extra line.

This is the “mouse door” cutout that lets you route cables with big connectors through small slots in mortise joints.  This one is still slightly too small, but it still works pretty well!

left, new box. Right, old box

I also changed the box configuration.  On the left is the new box, which is thinner and more affordable to fabricate.  It eliminates the on-edge holes, which I normally have to drill.  Originally I wanted to turn the tray on-edge and just laser cut the holes, but the cutter was not tall enough for that.

Thats all for this note!