Machine Canister!

Hey there, wonderful people!  Welcome back to the land of gears!  

Here we have a large hexagonal container, with a hinged lid latched closed by a trio of cogs driven by one central handle.  As usual, it's all print-in-place and requires no supports!  

Funnily enough, this all came out of the little gear contraption I posted in the end-of-month wrap-up!   I'll write a bit more on that sometime, and take a photo of the trail of test prints and prototypes that led here...

Right now, though, let's look at this canister!  First, the most obvious feature - the gears!  The most fun part of this design is the movement of the cogs, so the latching intentionally requires a large turn of the handle to swing the pins all the way into their housings.  In part, that's from the gear ratio between the middle and outer cogs, but mostly it's the long sweep of the grooves in the box walls.

Of course, the latches only fit into the walls because the lid is set down inside the box, below the rim, which required some careful manoeuvring with the hinge design.  

Because, of course, the box itself prints upside-down, and the lid prints right-way up, hinged to the outside.  So, the lid needed to hinge at the midpoint between the lip of the box and the depth of the inset, and this meant that the gears needed room to swing over the lip of the box.  Now, you might think that it would be easier just to remove that box lip above the hinge entirely, and you'd be right... except that that is actually an essential part of the bottom layer and needs to be there for anything above it to print :)

Anyway, rambling aside, a few prototypes later it all works nicely!

The base of the box is designed for printing upside-down, and will look familiar to anyone who's printed the slideback box or the linkage crate: 45-ish degree internal planes and a flat base.  So, let's look at printing considerations!

Printing tips!

The model prints with the box base-up and the lid cog-side-up.  No supports needed, all prints assembled!  As always with designs that have moving parts you'll want to make sure that your first layer is dialled in.

There shouldn't be any other particular considerations with this one - the parts are all fairly broad compared to their height, so everything should be pretty stable.

File Location

You'll find this one on Dropbox under Machine Canister.

Dropbox link has been updated, so be sure to get the latest one from the usual spot :)

I'll put a video of this one in action on Instagram shortly!

Have fun!

xoxo

Sven.