Articulator Dish! Kind of like the Slideback Box, but More Silly :)

Hey, wonderful people! 😍

Some designs just make me laugh every time I pick them up.  Well, at least this one does.  It's not actually that silly, though.  It's more that with that lid flopped over it looks a bit deflated and defeated.  I'm laughing right now just typing it.

The thing is, I started out aiming for something elegant and sophisticated (okay, relative to other plastic things, at least), and the undiginfied puppy-with-its-tongue-out results are somewhat at odds with that!  

So, what is this thing?

Well, it's a box, of sorts.  And if you thought some of my other box designs didn't stay closed, you ain't seen nothing yet!  This thing is made to open inadvertently!  That articulated lid bends and moves and has a life of its own.  The lid elements can even shuffle back and forth, compress and extend, while the box is 'closed'.  But hey, it's a "dish" not a "box", right?! :P

So, again, what is this?  It's very tactile.  One of the lesser-appreciated aspects of the fidget-toy craze was that those things really played on the sense of touch, and to some degree so does this design.  That lid smoothly runs back and forth through the fingers.  Wait, does that make this a fidget toy?  Oh no, again? 🤣

Of course, from a technical perspective, it's all sorts of things.  It's an articulated lid that prints in place inside a container, with hinged components that sit on an internal rail.  From a completely arbitrary design perspective, I consciously connected the final segment of the lid to the dish body without a final hinge, to make the lid feel like part of the dish, rather than something stuck on top.  

So, it's many things, but it's mostly fun, which is important in design, and important in 3D printing.  I hope you find it fun, too!

This design is under Articulator Dish on Dropbox - have fun :)