Mister Kettle!

Hey there, wonderful people!

Meet Mister Kettle!  He's a print-in-place box thingy who puts his articulated arms up to use his hands as a lid.  And he's cheerful, very cheerful!  Look at that smirk!

From a technical design point of view there are a couple of things worth noting.  The arms hinge out not from the sides but at 45 degrees, between the sides and the front.  This probably isn't how I would have designed it if I was working from scratch, but inspiration came via an intermediate design - more on that below.  The complexity in hinging from the side is that the arm and hand need to clear the corner of the top, which is why there's an indent up there, and why the raised rim drops down.

The curved arm, too, needs a little consideration.  The corner behind the arm is indented to allow sufficient clearance between the elbow and the body during printing, as well as to allow the bit that extends above the shoulder to rotate inwards when raising the arms.

So, the inspiration for this one!  Well, I will often just sit and play with shapes and concepts, just for the sake of it, without necessarily having an end in mind.  One day I made a kind of triangular tub with three arms that hinged up to form a lid.  I had an idea and grabbed a Sharpie...

So, there's Mister Kettle's ancestor, a far rougher and more angsty version!  

Printing Tips

No supports required, intended to be straightforward printing.  However, this is an articulated model so make sure your bottom layer is nice and neat, and that you don't have any print issues like stringing or overextrusion that might bind together moving parts.

Mister Kettle prints sitting down with his hands flat on the print bed: 

Print Dimensions

Mister Kettle occupies 138mm x 72mm on the print bed, and is 52mm tall.

File Location

You'll find this on dropbox under 750 Mister Kettle

(Dropbox link post:  https://www.patreon.com/posts/dropbox-and-are-31697592 )

Further Thoughts

You know, that shoulder hinge is reasonable sizeable, so Mister Kettle should scale up pretty well... I wonder how big he could go?...

Happy printing! :)

xoxo

Sven.