2P Machine Canister! That is, separate lid and body :) (Patreon)

Hey there wonderful people!  I stopped twirling cogs on the Machine Canister long enough to do up this two-piece version.  And it does actually have some interesting design considerations that differ from the original, hinged version.

At first glance, I figured hey, I'll just remove the hinges and tidy things up, and all will be easy.  And, that would have been true if the box body remained printed upside-down, but that seemed a bit pointless.  Printing box bodies upside down is a compromise to handle complex parts at the lid end that need to be on the bed, and since we've now removed those to print separately that's not a consideration.

And, printing right-way-up lets us have flat bases, inside and out :)

So, what were these extra considerations?  Well, as you've probably guessed it had to do with the print orientation.  But which parts would that affect?

The latching pins and the latching slots!

If you look back at the original hinged Machine Canister you'll notice that the top of the slots in the box is flat, and the top of the latching pins is flat, too, and those parts end up pressed up against each other.  That only works, though, because we print one of those upside-down.  So, the slots had to change, and now they have an easy 45 degree upwards angle at the top, rather than a horizontal face.

But, this change also meant the latching pin needed to change to suit, so those are now an extra 2mm taller with a matching angle.

But but but, this also had consequences for the lip of the box itself.  The lid is inset into the box a reasonable distance, but those latching slots are deep, and the new 45-degree upwards surface now breached the top of the box.  So, the box lip is now a few millimetres taller to account for that!

Overall, then, the box is very similar, but slightly different in all sorts of little ways.  

It's still just as much fun to spin open and closed, though :)

Printing Tips!

This version of the Machine Canister is about the same difficulty to print as the original, in that the same considerations apply to making sure the first layer is good and that there isn't any stringing that might bind the moving parts.

However, this two piece version has a significant advantage from a printing point of view - it can be printed on smaller printers that couldn't manage the full-size version of the original.

Both parts print right way up in this version - box has the base down, and the lid has the flat side down.

Dimensions

I had some really good feedback about including dimensions for prints, including internal dimensions for boxes, which I think is a great idea!  I'm going to measure off the actual printed part, here, rather than the model.

Lid: hexagon about 90mm across between opposing flat sides.  The handle reaches to about 26mm.

Body external:  Hexagon about 106mm across between opposing flat sides and about 67mm tall.

Body internal: Hexagon about 93mm across between opposing flat sides and about 66mm from floor to lip.  The lid sits about 42mm from the base when in place, since it's inset

File Location

You'll find the files for this under Machine Canister 2P on Dropbox!  There are of course two STL files for this one, rather than just one.

One last thing!

If anyone's interested I'll put up a taller body for this one!  Let me know in the comments or on discord :)

xoxo

Sven.