Tab mismatch when using same thickness and tab width. about laser-cutter

[kigster]

There is absolutely a bug! It has already been reported and more than once.

I need to find the time to fix it, but in the meantime, folks don't understand how the Tab value is being used. You generally want tabs to be 5-10x longer than the thickness of the material. The tabs entry box on the makeabox.io has a question mark next to it, which reads as described below.

When you specified 4 — the tabs end up being very teeth-like, and there are LOTS of them to cut. The design is simpler to cut AND generate when there are only a few total tabs per side, eg, 3, 5 or 7. That makes tabs longer, but the same concept still works.

My recommendation is for now to leave this blank, or set it to something like 30 or 40.

Approximate Tab Width

If you specify a value in this field, it will be used as a guideline, not an exact value. The layout of the tabs on each side of the box contributes to the overall aesthetics of the final product.

One of the key differences of MakeABox and other tools, is that MakeABox goes out of its way to create a symmetric tab layout. To accomplish this, we always choose an odd number of outward tabs per side, ie. 3, 5, 7, etc. The value you provide in this field helps the algorithm determine how many tabs per side to generate.

[ekohilas]

Is this because the tabs are changed size so that they're odd instead?

[kigster]

Can you try leaving the tab field blank?

Or set it to an odd number?

[ekohilas]

@kigster doing that seems to resolve the problem.
However now that I have a better understanding of the tool, even under those dimensions, if the tab width is there as a suggestion, doesn't that mean that there's still a bug?

For example, the tabs are mismatched with a tab width of 3 as well.
makeabox-174.00W-54.00H-114.00D-3.00T-20171205063016.pdf

[kigster]

Duplicate of #6

[ekohilas]

@kigster I'm still new to all of this so thank you for the clarification. :)
I am curious however why it is good for tabs to be 5-10x longer than the thickness of the material and why more cuts are bad?