Secure-o-Box

Hey there, wonderful people!

It's fascinating to look back over ideas and see how things have developed.  Someone once said that it's a sign that an idea is a good one if you can't quite work out why you didn't think of it earlier.

And, so it goes with hinged boxes!  I remember precariously-balanced boxes printed on edges, then clamshell boxes that printed much more robustly but required that lid and body be the same depth.  Then came rear struts that allowed for asymmetry in the lid, best evidenced in the Atom Case.  But the Atom Case also shows another significant limitation - it needs a separate part to hold it closed.

Yes, the good old threaded ring!  Secure and reliable, but it always bugged me that there was a separate part.  More recently, I experimented with captive bolts, like the threaded handle in the Mechanical Valentine, and that worked very well indeed.  That approach still had its own limitations, though, most notably that the bolt extended quite significantly into the interior of the box itself.  The captive threaded bolt in the Secure-o-Box is only the thickness of the lid.

I could write endlessly about this model, but I'll just nerd out about a couple of design elements:

* There's a little tab on each side of the interior near the front, and small matching grooves in the lid.  The two parts have very little clearance at the back edge but plenty at the front.  This forces the lid forward and provides a bearing surface that keeps the tightened bolt from just forcing the lid backwards into the hinges.

* The dropped sides on the lid are to provide somewhere to grip the lid!  Without that it's a matter of trying to pull the lid up by the handle, which isn't the easiest for that.

* The captive bolt in the lid actually only occupies part of the lid height - part is also dedicated to a bearing surface that allows the bolt to rotate but not tilt (which was a big problem in early versions!)

Secure-o-Box for Cards - update!

It's a resized Secure-o-box designed for holding cards!  The interior dimensions are 68.5mm x 67.5mm x 93mm, which  neatly fits a certain standard size of game card, including Magic: The Gathering cards and one of the two most popular sizes of playing cards.

Thanks to Axel for photos with actual MtG cards! :)

Print Description

This is an articulated print, so take care that your first layer is nice and neat and that there aren't any print issues like stringing or overextrusion that might bind moving parts together.

Print Dimensions

The Secure-o-Box occupies 89mm x 176mm on the build plate and is 58mm tall.

Supports Needed?

Not at all!  Designed for straightforward printing!

Scalability

This one will have the usual constraints on scaling - hinges and threads will be the tricky bit.  The tolerances are generous so you could probably scale it down a bit if your print is precise, but at some point things that should move will cease to do so!  

Likewise, scaling up will make things looser, though you could attempt to address that by expanding perimeters in the slicer if you're feeling adventurous.

Print Orientation

The Secure-o-Box prints with the lid open.

Further Thoughts

I have a stack of different versions sitting on the desk in front of me as I write this - if you look carefully you might see some hexagons on earlier versions :P

Happy printing!

xoxo

Sven.

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582 Secure-o-Box