Battery Boxes and This Month's Disaster!

Howdy, wonderful people!

Okay, so I'm being a bit melodramatic with the word disaster, but I did indeed have a design that fell by the wayside in favour of a more robust and practical solution.  And that solution is the one you see here, for storing AA batteries.

This one's called the 24AA Battery Crate, and as you might guess, it holds 24 AA-sized batteries.  And it's a print-in-place design with a hinged lid with a ninety-degree angle in it.  As usual, no supports needed!

I really like the way this came out, but the original approach was very, very different....

First, though, let's look at this thing.  It prints upside-down, which would ordinarily pose some problems for the base, but that's where the internal structures come into play.  Those 45-degree surfaces that form the battery holes also support the flat base, without any need for the kind of elaborate ribs and such that I often use in such cases.   

File Location and Printing Tips

Before we continue the story, here are the important bits:

File location: Dropbox, under 809 24AA Battery Crate

As for printing tips, it's the usual - make sure your bottom layer is nice and neat, because that'll be the top of the box when it's done.  Watch for any stringing or other print issues that might bind moving parts together!

The whole thing prints upside-down, like so:

As an easy check, look to make sure the small ribs are on top when printing, and the small indents are against the build plate.

The Original Plan

So, what was the original plan?

Well, here are some test prints from along the way...

The concept was to have a battery caddy that would dispense batteries one at a time via a handle on the side.  And, it mostly worked!  The top was hinged, and the whole thing printed in place with no supports.  

However, it jammed up way too easily.

The compromises made for printing in place contributed to the batteries getting wedged inside just a bit too easily.  It would mostly work, and then something would get caught.

I really like the concepts in this thing, but I think it's probably more useful for something like a marble run, where the orientation of the thing rolling around doesn't matter.

Anyway!  In case anyone wants to look at the thing, I've posted the model on Dropbox under 999 ZZZ Experiments / AA Battery Dispenser

Final Thoughts

Things rolling down ramps are lots of fun, and this brought back memories of playing with marble run designs in the past.  I picked up a bunch of 5mm ball bearings a while back to experiment with, and maybe it's time to pull those out and see where they lead!

I love the start of a new month!  While I will undoubtedly return to past things along the way (Pi cases, I'm looking at you), there's a feeling that the new month brings new directions and new things to explore.

But first, there's still one more polyhedron, as promised!  More spam arriving soon :D

xoxo

Sven.