Neutron Tube

Howdy, wonderful people!

Welcome back to the world of print-in-place assemblies!  This sci-fi-styled geometric cylinder features a hinged circular lid that is locked down by a big, threaded ring.  The whole thing prints assembled and in a closed position, with no supports required.  And, in fact, it all prints upside-down.

You'll notice there are four different sizes of these tubes!  They only differ in height - the mechanical parts are identical across the models.    

Amusingly, this design is the polar opposite of the Sunshine Box.  They have similarities in that they both have a hinged lid and a locking ring, but the design approaches are entirely different.  While the Sunshine Box prints right-way-up with the lid open and the lock ring disengaged, the Neutron Tube is closed and locked.

What that does mean, though, is that the Neutron Tube is not constrained in its height in the same way, and can be arbitrarily long!  The trade-off there, though, is that the inside base is a cone shape, rather than being flat, since the whole thing prints inverted.

Print Description

Normal mode print with print-in-place assembled moving parts.

So, make sure your first layer is neat and that you don't have any print artifacts like stringing or overextrusion that might bind moving parts together!

Print Dimensions

86 x 85mm on the bed.  The heights are: 118mm, 156mm, 209mm, and 276mm

Supports needed?  

No supports required!

Scalability

Tricky, due to moving parts!  You could possibly scale down if you were really careful with print quality and settings.  There's always the option of contracting the outer perimeter as it's scaled down, but at some point the size of the mechanical features (i.e. hinge components and threads) is going to be smaller than the tolerances required for the printer to keep them from bonding during printing!  

Print Orientation

Prints upside down with the lid closed and the ring in the locking position, like so:

File location

You'll find this one on Dropbox at 683 Neutron Tube

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

Further Thoughts

This is another one of those designs that ended up in a vastly different place to where it began.  Initially, long before it was a viable print, there were bevel gears and locking pins, but design is all about exploration, and those features were subsumed by a more robust and satisfying thread-and-hinge combination.  Sometimes I'll look at my initial sketches and it'll be a rough approximation of where things ended up, but not with this one.  Not at all :)

Happy printing!

xoxo

Sven.