Electronics/Media

Anyone need some slip top battery carriers? 

I did. 

Well, kinda… This was a drift of another project I did in the last few days, a small cartridge box. Realized the same design could be made to hold just about any cylendrical item… like a battery. SO I remodeled from the ground up to give me a fully parameter-izable model. Now I just plug in numbers and I get different sized cases. 

I Have wanted a safe way to carry a spare 18650 for a while(not that I HAVE a spare but thats besides the point… I have ended up with a loose cell some days and its annoying. )

Anyway. 

battery cases! 

I did 3 basic designs for me, a 4xAA box, a 3xAAA box(headlamps anyone?) and a 2×18650 box(somehow, not shown… hrrm.).  Need to go back and do something for 2 or 3 16340 or CR123, just in case I ever need it. OR wait till I need it… lol. That was the concept to an easy to use pre modeled file.. Print as I need things instead of 2 days of modeling every time. 

These are printed in PETG, a little stronger than the other plastic I have(PLA), with a good heat resistance, and a bonus of being resistant to most chemicals, and waterproof(most soda and water bottles are PET or PETG).

To be geeky; they are printed from a 0.4mm nozzle at a whopping 0.8mm line width(everything says not to go over 150% of nozzle width, which would be 0,6mm… I haven’t had a single issue with 0.8mm. Tempted to try a full 1mm.) in vase mode(Spiralized outer contour in Cura) at 0.25mm layer height, 235C nozzle, 70C bed temps. Filament is Sunlu 1.75mm PETG. All from a Elegoo Neptune 2S.

I’m trying not to totally 3D geek out in these printing posts, but will tell you a little about the mechanics, and the trick I found, for getting these to print in a different style.Normally these would take about 1.5 hours to print top and bottom, and use about a dollars worth of plastic. IN “Vase Mode” they print in 1/3 of that time, and use half the plastic, or less. The thing is, that Vase mode, normally only prints the outermost surface of an item as one continuous line. It compketely ignores the insides no matter what it is, and can’t print any horizontal surfaces beyont to base/bottom. Thanks to a guy on YouTube, I now have a trick. You slightly change the structure, by slitting into the side of the object, connecting the inner and outer surfaces, in essence tricking the software so it prints both. No top surface, and Slight loss of structural integrity(although the clearances could be tightened so that the lines touch and fuse at the ends! ) but for most things the difference is negligable…. UNless its something you plan to run over with a tank… then this might not be a good approach. 😉

Anyone interested in the print files,both STL and the fully parametarized OpenSCAD file to create different boxes, I have it uploaded to my account at printables.   A big bonus, this will make cartridge boxes, just need dimensions of the cartridge in question!

https://www.printables.com/model/358094-parametric-vase-mode-battery-casesopenscad