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Finger-joint boxes with MakerCase and Fusion

· Fox Bright

Let MakerCase generate the box, then bring the DXF into Fusion, extrude the panels and snap them together with Align. You end up with a box you can modify in 3D and still cut flat.

The MakerCase website showing a 100 mm finger-joint box preview with width, height, depth and material thickness fields.

MakerCase draws finger-joint boxes for you. Fusion lets you change them. Put the two together and you get a box that is quick to generate, easy to cut, and still yours to modify: a hole in the lid, a cutout for a cable, a logo on the front, all lined up across the panels because you did it on the assembled 3D model.

Generate the box

Go to makercase.com, pick the basic box, and work in millimetres.

  • Width, height, depth. Decide whether you are entering inside or outside dimensions. If something has to fit in the box, use inside.
  • Material thickness. Our laser plywood measures about 2.8 mm and the laser removes about 0.1 mm. I round up to 3 mm. That gives a fit with a little room for glue, not a fight.
  • Open or closed, and finger joints. Finger size is mostly aesthetic. Tiny fingers are fiddly to assemble; two or three fingers per edge on a 100 mm box is about right.
MakerCase form with width, height, depth, material thickness, closed box and finger joint options
MakerCase settings for a 100 mm cube in 3 mm material with finger joints.

Download the plans as a DXF. Turn labels off first, or you will be deleting label layers in Fusion. Keep the panels separate and leave kerf compensation off, because the 3 mm figure already covers it. Note where the file lands.

Bring it into Fusion

  1. New design, new sketch on the bottom plane. Insert DXF and point at the file. If labels came along, untick each layer named label in the insert dialog.
  2. Finish the sketch and extrude every panel by the material thickness, 3 mm. That number has to match the slot width in the DXF.
  3. Press A and give each panel a different wood appearance. Six identical grey rectangles are impossible to keep track of once you start rotating them.

Assemble it with Align

Pick the front panel as your reference and attach the others to it, one at a time, with Modify → Align. Align works from joint origins in the centre of a face: click the face on the panel you are moving, then the matching face on the panel it should touch. Use the angle option in the dialog to rotate it into place. Keep the front panel facing you so you do not lose orientation.

Fusion Align dialog with two wood-textured panels being joined at a finger joint
Aligning the right panel to the front panel. Each panel has a different wood appearance so it is obvious which is which.

Check as you go that nothing overlaps. If the fingers interfere, you have the wrong face or the wrong angle. Move could do this too, but you would be typing distances; Joint would work as well, with rigid joints. Align is the fast one.

Now modify it

This is the point of the exercise. Sketch on any face of the assembled box, cut a hole, and it goes through the right panel at the right place. Cut a tapered hole through the top and bottom and they stay lined up when you flatten the panels again for the laser.