Tentacle Treasure Chest and Happy 2023!

Happy new year, wonderful people!

Yes, it's that time when we all gather around our printers and welcome the new year, one layer at a time!  

Presenting the Tentacle Treasure Chest!  This print-in-place treasure chest with suckery tentacle has a lid that pivots on a hidden internal hinge and rotates to the side, which is also how the chest prints.

This is quite a sizeable print, but it will *just* fit onto a Prusa Mini's 180mm square print area!  

All the angles in the chest and the tentacle are designed for the orientation in which they print - the top of the lid of course prints at 90 degrees, then pivots upwards to close.  The placement of the tentacle is such that the lid just stays closed, but there are places for magnets to keep things much more secure.  See below for more details on the magnets.

Print Description

This is an articulated model, so make sure your bottom layer is nice and neat and watch out for print artefacts like stringing or overextrusion that might bind moving parts together.

Optional Magnets

This model is better with magnets glued in!  There are spaces for twelve 6mm x 3mm cylindrical magnets - six in the chest body, and six in the lid sides.

Print Dimensions

The Tentacle Treasure Chest occupies 165mm x 177mm on the print bed and is 150mm tall.

Supports Needed?

Not at all!  Designed for straightforward printing!

Scalability

While this model isn't designed for scaling, you could probably scale it up or down a bit with care. The magnet holes will obviously be affected, though!  I've successfully printed it at 60% scale, though without magnets of course.

Print Orientation

The chest prints right-way-up with the lid open, like so:

File Location

You'll find this one at at 609 Tentacle Treasure Chest

Link to dropbox post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31697592

Further Thoughts

Happy new year!  

It really doesn't seem like another year has gone by already.  Really, it doesn't seem like very long ago that I was putting my first kit printer together and watching things magically appear on the build plate!  It still feels like magic, of course, but I have more printers these days.

I'm fortunate that I get to spend a good portion of my life playing around with fun ideas and solving interesting problems, which is only possible thanks to your amazing support and encouragement!  I am eternally humbled by the enthusiasm and positivity in our little community, and I'm so very glad you're a part of it with me.

See you in 2023! 

xoxo

Sven.

(technically, it's already 2023 here, but whatever! :P)