AA-AAA Battery Crate

Hey there, wonderful people!

It's spam time again!  Early on, I did try consolidating things into individual posts, but it made it too easy to miss releases, so spam it is!  I often have a couple of things reaching completion at the same time, mostly because that's how test printing works out - things printing in parallel overnight or during the day end up kind of synchronised that way.

But on to the model: it's the 24AA box reworked to hold 12 AA batteries and 15 AAA batteries, and it has the name "AA-AAA Battery Crate", just because it was appealingly silly.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the time in developing this version went in deciding how to arrange the AAA batteries.  There are a few different patterns that will give 14 or 15 holes while maintaining the same kind of spacing, so the decision ultimately came down to which one had the right kind of look :)

Printing Tips

You already know what this is going to say, right? :D  Take care of that first layer, since it'll be the top of the lid, and watch out for stringing or other print defects that might bind moving parts together.  Good things to be careful about with any print, really :)

The box prints upside-down, which means the three foot-like protrusions are on top during printing: 

File Location

You'll find this on dropbox under 808 AA-AAA Battery Crate

Final Thoughts

That comment I made about finding the right kind of look makes me think about what's really great about designing for 3D printing.  Yes, it's awesome that we can create purpose-specific functional designs, but it's all wrapped in fun, creative exploration and interesting technical problem solving, and that's ultimately the point.  

Well, that and how cool it is every time a new shape materialises on the printer, which remains amazing, every time :)

xoxo

Sven.