We were looking for perfection in creating these foam inlays for our tools, but it’s not exactly cheap. We used our XTool D1 Pro 20W Laser to cut the Milwaukee Foam for our PACKOUT box. The lines are near perfect for each of the tools and no manual tracing is necessary.
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Get near perfect cuts for your foam Inlays let's see how Just recently when we ran the giveaway Of the Milwaukee impact wrenches which This is the actual giveaway right now And it's actually shipping out tomorrow So we found out the winter today we Contacted him he gave us his shipping Address and it's headed out to Texas Tomorrow anyway how did we get the Perfect foam inlay cutouts for this well We actually had to think long and hard About it but we've come up with a couple Of ideas one that's absolutely insane Expensive and takes a little bit of time And the other one that doesn't take so Much time and you can still get the near Perfect Cuts now when it comes to foam For doing foam inlays you can Source This from several places you can go with The Kaizen foam which is great stuff all Of us basically layered foam as you see Here there's different layers that make Up this thick piece of foam this is Actually sourced from Milwaukee so they Sell as you see kind of The Knockout so The groove moves right here they sell These for their pack out system they Pack out two drawer box and as you see Here A couple of grooves there and this Little thing right here fits perfectly Inside that box so you can buy this Straight from Milwaukee ready to go in
Here you don't have to cut it to size or Anything else but again whether you're Buying Kaizen whether you're buying the The Milwaukee foam or Shadow foam There's several different places that You can Source this foam but let's take A look on how we actually cut these out So these drawers on these pack outs are Just like a typical drawer in any Cabinet if you look here on the sides on The rails you have a little lever you Push down here and on the opposite side Will be the opposite way pull it out and Now you can pull the drawer out So now that we have this drawer out we Can see this a little easier and see how Easy the foam actually fits inside of There again not that applicable at the Moment but we've got this foam inlay That we want to put in this drawer and We want to put a couple of tools in here So how do we get the perfect fit for a Tool now we know the typical way to do This is you take your impact wrench or Drill or wrenches or whatever you have And you lay it up here and then you take Your marker or your pencil or your Grease pencil and you trace along the Tool well that works out pretty well but Then you got to deal with the offset of Wherever the lead or the the ink or Whatever's coming out of the pen and You've got to you're going to trace find Right here and right here but once you
Get in this mid section where you're Trying to trace along this handle you Got to make sure whether you're holding This upright and if you are then you've Got that all set to deal with anyway There's some imperfections at best to Deal with now some people may say who Cares get it traced get it cut be done With it and then once you get that Trace Then you bring in your razor knife and You cut you know your depth and then you Dig that out and we've seen this Probably a million times if you haven't Then you can find plenty of YouTube Videos to see we wanted a better option We wanted a more perfect look and so we Think we found out we think we know we Found it in fact we've got the crazy Absolute insane uh you know spend more Time and spend more money than then it's Really probably worth option that we're Going to show you and we've got another Option that's kind of middle of the road That's going to still be quick but give You more of a perfect cut so let's take A look so I saw where people had taken Some uh kind of flat pictures if you Will of things and so basically lay it Down take your phone take a you know a Photo straight over the top then turn it Into a flat file and shade everything Out anyway come up with an outline and Then print that out and use that for Cutting the problem with that is when
You're using a camera a lens wherever It's at it's going to use that code Effect so you know the closer you are The more it's going to spread out and so You're going to get some of this as you See in this camera lens here doesn't Matter how exact perpendicular I get This you're going to see some of the top Of this battery here you're seeing some Of the underside here you're not seeing Some of the top here and if I go here Then you're not getting a true Perspective of that actual tool when it Comes to flattening it out and so you're Not going to get the right perspective If I just printed that out and you know Scanned that in and printed it out and And cut out the outline now you can do Some manipulation and get that right However again I think we've got a better Option now don't get too excited yet This is not all about the laser here but We recently got the X tool 20 watt laser In and so we thought why not use a laser To cut the outline of the foam or of the Tools in the foam but again hold up a Second if you think it's all about the Laser it's not we've got what we've done Will also work manually as well but we Are going to show you with the laser but Let's talk about how we got there So we needed a near perfect flat image To work with with the laser as well as If we wanted to print this out cut it
Out and use it as a template and so I Scoured the internet and things and Basically you want to search for an Image of a tool Acme Tools has most of The tools that we deal with so I'm just Going to type in a model number here hit Enter And so there's the stubby so M12 Stubby the 2555 and when I click on this I get a nice digital and that looks near Flat and when I say flat meaning I'm Really not seeing any rolled edges from The top or from the bottom I just see a Nice side profile of this tool and so What I can do here is I can just right Click say save image as save it to my Downloads and I can call this stubby and Click save And I'm not going to really do a Complete tutorial on this I think you Know where I'm going on this and you've Got to have some understanding of images And go to that file and then I'm going To right click and open with I'm going To use Photoshop So I've got it in Photoshop but by the Way there are also free options so if You're running a PC so paint.net is one Here where you can download for free and is another one so there's several Free image programs where you can Actually do what we need to do we don't Need to do a a lot of image manipulation Here we just want to be able to delete The background and get an outline of
This tool and here's how we're going to Do this so now I've got this picture of This Milwaukee stubby impact wrench let Me make this a little larger here And so first I want to go in and delete My background so I'll take my magic wand Click on that white background hit Delete and now I've got a deleted Background with this colored image here Now I really don't need the colored Image in fact I don't want the colored Image because I want the outline of this Tool and so what I'm going to do is I'm Going to go up to image and go to Adjustments and down to Hue and Saturation so I'm going to crank it all The way to dark and now you see what has Happened so now I have a dark image of This tool and that's really all I need Right now now if you're wanting to print This out you don't want to use all the Black ink you could go in and make an Outline of this tool So in in Photoshop I would go to say Inner Glow and I could make that Inner Glow white and say okay and then I could Come in and delete the black output as a PNG blah blah anyway I'm not going to do The outer glow right now I'm just going To use this black image and again you Could print this out and use all your Black ink if you wanted to or make the Outline and just print the outline With the laser I can use this image
Right here so But before I export this I want to make Sure that my size is correct so I'm Going to go and and all your image Studios you typically have some sort of Measurement So I'm going to go to my ruler tool here In Photoshop and I'm going to measure From the tip of the Anvil to the back of The tool And that tells me that it's right at 6.43 inches now if I actually take my Stubby And measure it it's right at five inches So what do we need to do well we need to Shrink that image down until we get to Five inches so I'm going to go to my Selection And Transform And I can shrink that down a bit And now I'll take my ruler and measure Again 5.172 okay Make it a little smaller Measure again 4.872 4.983 so right at five inches so I'm Happy with that so now I can say I'm going to export as a PNG And we'll save that in our laser cutter And we'll call it stubby PNG So what we could do with that now now we Know it's the right size we could
Literally print that on our printer take Your scissors cut it out and then Basically here's what I've actually cut Out with a laser on a piece of cardboard But still the same thing would come into Effect where you would take this now and Now you have the perfect outline to Trace on your foam and cut out by hand With your razor knife but now you don't Have to worry about the offset when You're using the marker or the pencil on The tool you've got a nice perfect Cutout to actually go on the foam so That's how you would do that by hand Very quick within you know I could Probably manipulate that whole scenario In probably a minute and a half now I Kind of know what I'm doing around image Software but it's not hard to pick up And if you probably ask somebody they Can probably walk you through it pretty Easily however let's talk about now how We would do this with our laser And I'm going to go ahead and close this One out here And I'm going to import that picture That we just had so I'm going to say Import and grab that stubby PNG So there's that black outline of that Tool and now once it's in here in my Laser program in light burn I can right Click and I can say Trace image because What we're wanting to do is get a vector Image of that file
Basically we want plotting points for That laser to follow and I can actually take a look here and so This pink line around here this purple Line is what that laser is going to Follow And say okay I'm good with that and now It actually deleted my image out of the Way and all I have now is that vector or That outline of that tool and all the Plotting points And now I can turn this wherever I need To And now I'm ready to cut an outline of That tool in foam or cardboard or what Have you so if you do have a laser Cutter or you have access to a laser Cutter maybe you've got a friend with One you could go ahead and kind of make The file take it over to them say hey Can you cut this out on this fold for me And maybe they can help you out anyway So it's that quick to get that digital Flat file into a in this case light burn Studio and let's make some Cuts now now I'm going to go ahead and open up the File that we were using That I've already got laid out And basically what I have here Is a mid torque as you see right here And M12 stubby And two M12 battery spots as well as an M18 battery spot here And I've got different cut paths for
Each one of them and as you can see over Here this is all my different powers of The laser and how deep I'm cutting and Even when I'm cutting this outline you Can see I've got a box within a box here And what I'm doing here is we know when We see the side profile of this that Basically right through here and right Through here it's going to be deeper in That foam so it needs to recess further So I'm cutting a little box here where The battery attaches this part right Here that's going to be deeper this part Here that's deeper and so you can see These extra outlines in here where we're Going to cut deeper more power to the to The laser when we cut those processes Now first I'm going to hit my frame Button and that's going to basically Frame out the area where it's going to Cut And what that's doing is doing basically A complete outline of the furthest Points of my plotted area so this Ensures that we don't have any obstacles In the way and when the laser program Starts running and burning then it's not Going to hit a boundary obviously hit The side of the kind of the max output Of the laser itself so that ensures me When I frame it that it's going to be It's going to do everything in the path That's set for it go ahead and run this So you see it first did the complete
Outline of the tool now it's doing those Deeper inserts where we can dig out a Little further where the tool sits Further down in the foam We think That's going to do the M18 battery Now it's going to come over and do the Two M12 batteries Now we have a perfect cut for those Tools Foreign Fit for all the tools You need to do a little more digging you Can do so But the outlines have been cut and you Can kind of see the two-step right here Where it made the original out cut and Then the deeper cut so I could dig out This foam here Foreign Again we can go as deep as we want to But don't forget Again if we could use our foam to Print out your image once you make sure That it's the right size It on your foam and cut it out with your Razor knife and you're good to go Well you may think we're absolutely Insane by utilizing a laser to cut out Our foam inlays but that's just how we Think around here is we think of what's The absolute most insane way to actually Do something no actually it works out Pretty well and there's a little bit of
Work on the front end and then you have To watch the laser and figure out how Deep you need to cut all the foam but it Works out pretty well and the more we Used it the more we kind of perfected The way to do it and knowing how deep we Need to cut especially the secondary Cuts and things like that now we haven't Used it to actually fill the hole kind Of like you would be engraving and Actually emboss the whole thing and do Let the laser do all the work we figured That would be too much smoke and what's The point of actually having the layered Foam if you're going to do that anyway Now we also mentioned about you know Using a printer and actually printing Out the actual template cutting it out And then using it and by the way if you Are going to use a laser then use some Cardboard to practice your templates Make sure sure the sizes are right make Sure you don't need to manipulate any Certain areas or anything and that works Out quite well and then you have a ton Of cardboard cutouts laying around Everywhere and you can use those for Pretend if you want to and then others Have talked about buying this stuff I Think it's like a floor material from Like Harbor Freight and using that for Your foam inlays and I guess you could Do that you would basically have to cut Multiple layers of this so you'd cut
This one cut another one cut another one But we think that's kind of a pain now Again you may want to save a few bucks I Think you know a whole four pack of this Were was uh 15 or so Um but the actual foam inlay for the Drawers from Milwaukee I think was 25 And that gives you two of them so I Don't think you're saving a whole lot of Money and you're getting that layered Foam effect here same with your buying a Kaizen insert or Shadow foam something Like that so again I don't know how much Money you're saving by this but I could See like wrenches things like that would Go well on here and that's the other Thing the idea that we had would work on Your channel locks on wrenches on Anything where you just take a an image Of a file and you scale it to where it Needs to be to make sure the size is Correct print it out use it as a Template but now you're no longer Tracing you know around with a you know A thick marker or anything and trying to Trace out the profile of something like This now you can actually print out and Cut out a true template of what you need And then use that and by all means if You have use of a laser then you can use That as well because our X tool came in Very handy hey make sure you keep track Of us on Instagram Facebook Twitter and Even Tick Tock and by the way let us
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