James Akumu

Press Fit Project

For my press fit project, I decided to make something simple to familiarize myself with the Epilog lazer cutter above. I first wanted to create a bird house, but that turned out to be more complecated than I thought. I therefore searched for a simpler design, and came up with a business card holder.

I designed the project on Google SketchUp, as I was told it is very good for beginners, as this was my first time using 3D design software. I got some help from an architect friend of mine to start.

After watching a few tutorials on youtube, I became a lot better a lot quicker than I would have imagined. I strongly recommend that any student having difficulties using Google SketchUp, should watch the tutorials on youtube.

To cut the project on the Epilog Laser cutter, I had to convert the SketchUp files (.skp) to .dxf format for compatability. To do this, I had to download a SketchUp plugin for conversion to a format compatible with the Epilog Laser cutter.

On top of that, I had to turn the 3D design into 2D drawings as the Epilog laser cutter can only read the x and y axis.

I therefore copied outlines of each of the parts to new pages on SketchUp. After that, I exported each one to .dxf format using the plugin I had previously downloaded. The parts are now ready to be cut.