Hinged lid containers with dovetail connector

Cute little containers with hinged lid and dovetail groove to combine them to a complete small part storage system.

I designed this originally for my beloved girlfriends jewelry but discovered very quickly that these little containers come very handy for us hobbyists to store our printer nozzles, our little screws, our electronic components or whatever else comes in such small sizes that is tends to disappear in bigger boxes. For non-hobbyists this storage system may store pills, hearing aid batteries, contact lenses etc. But please note that they are not made to carry around stuff in your bags, as the lids don't lock in the close position (that may be an upgrade later if largely requested).

Thanks to the dovetail groove on the backside, the containers can be combined to single or double lines of storage systems, or into even crazier shapes like circles or mosaics if that is what makes your day.

As the lids will stay in any position you put them in, you can simply have all your lids open to get an overview over you complete inventory.

For the first release, it was only the container with 10mm of inner height, but now you will find the complete range from 10mm to 25mm available as .stl files (the 10mm file is identical to the original upload).

Also the connection bars for combining multiple containers are now starting to become available here:
https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/47901-hinged-lid-containers-connector-bar

For those of you that want to have a lot of containers in one storage system, it its probably good idea to go two-dimensional. Respective frames can be found here:
https://www.prusaprinters.org/prints/48005-hinged-lid-containers-connector-frame

Let me know if you have special needs in terms of container height, combinations of bar size and shape (how many containers do you want to combine in a row, or back-to-back double row, or circle, you name it...)

If you print this please post a picture, that always makes my day.

Stay safe everyone, protect yourself and others and help this planet to move on with our normal life as soon as possible!

Print instructions

The parts print very easily in the uploaded orientation without supports or brim. For the lid I recommend 100% infill, the container can be done with 15% gyroid infill, but the hinge parts should be done in 100%.

I strongly propose PETG over PLA, as PETG preserves it's flexibility and keep up a bit of mechanical tension. With PLA you will notice that the lid moves very lightly after a short while and the spring on the dovetail will wear out.

As the hinge parts are very tiny, they are on the edge of what many FDM printers will be able to do. Therefore I recommend a relatively small layer height. On my Prusa i3 MK3S and on my Prusa Mini, the parts came out fine with 0.15mm layer height. On my Ender3Pro it was probably a good idea to go for 0.12mm rather than 0.2mm, which gave me very usable parts.

Mounting instruction:
After printing, just clean the parts from tiny imperfections with you fingernail if needed. Lay the lid on the container in the correct orientation (the tiny handle must be on the upper side). Then pretend to open the lid by 180° without snapping the parts together at that point in time. That is the position which is intended to snap the lid onto the container, as there is a tiny groove on the lid in that orientation.