Lasering a tray for my Cherokee

I’ve discovered a fatal flaw in my beloved 1998 Jeep Cherokee – the armrest storage is too deep to be useful.  However, there are dividers for cassette tapes in there that provide a nice support for a tray insert, allowing for much more organization.

This was my first custom project since getting trained on the laser cutter.  Determining the size of the tray was a simple affair, but designing it was a bit more challenging.  I ended up using BoxMaker to create a box with my desired dimensions.  This left me with a box, not a tray, so I imported the file into Adobe Illustrator.  After deleting the shape for the top, I removed the dovetails from the top edges so they would end up flat instead, and placed the graphic in the middle to make it a little swankier looking.  A couple of finger holes on the long sides, and we’re ready to laser.

After cutting and gluing up the joints, I have a tray that functions and fits perfectly!  It sits on top of the lip for the cassette tapes, which is about half way up.

Big thanks to Matt & Matt for helping me get the cutter working smoothly, and Terry and Devon for taking the time to train me on the safe use of the machine.