box

I’ve been using these boxes from AliExpress to package some of my items but I wanted to have a go at making a version of the boxes for myself so that I could more freely customise them.

Having my own files means that I can change the box dimensions and can design prints to go directly onto the box.

There’s a great website – https://www.templatemaker.nl/ – that provides templates for a wide variety of boxes, all for free. You can set the desired dimensions for your box and it’ll generate a vector file that you can use with a paper cutting (Cricut/Silhouette/Siser) or laser engraving machine to cut the files for you. If you don’t have a machine, you can still print the files to cut by hand.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the matching box template on the site. The closest file is the passepartout template which is assembled from two pieces. I wanted to try making my own template file, and I wanted to contribute to the free template space to give back to others the same way that sites like TemplateMaker gives to the community. I decided to make my own parametric design in OnShape to achieve this.

Click here to access OnShape file

If you have your own OnShape account, you can copy the workspace and update the file to set the dimensions to whatever you want.

In your copy of the file, double click the variables in the left side, which appear with the cursive “x” symbol next to them.

This will bring up a little dialogue allowing you to change the values – once you update them make sure to click the green click to confirm your change.

Repeat this for each variable. If you are using paper or light card, you probably won’t need to edit BoardClearance.

The template will recompute based on the values you chose.

You can export the templates from the drawing tabs, accessible at the bottom of the screen. There are two drawings – one that has extra spacing for thicker cardboard and another that has flush cuts, ignoring the BoardClearance value.

To ensure that the dimensions of your file update to match the variables that you chose earlier, make sure to click the refresh button at the top left of the Drawing view. It’ll be highlighted when there are changes to load in, and dimmed out when the changes are synchronised.

Right click the drawing tab and select “Export…” to view export options. For using with all common cutting machines, you can export the file as an SVG. It will put the graphics inside of a clipping rectangle which you can ignore when cutting the files.

Set the blue lines to score and the red lines to cut in your cutting machine software. To assemble, almost all the blue lines fold inwards (valley folds) except for the four arms that have the slots in them – they fold away (mountain folds).

I don’t yet have a source/plan for the sleeves – let me know if you have any ideas!