Exponent Box (Patreon)

Hey there, wonderful people!

This might be my new favourite.  It's a combination of new and subtly complex gear design and some aesthetic nods to some old favourite models.  It also has hexagons.

If we think back to about a year ago, I designed a model I called the Chomper Box, which had two circular gear segments attached to lid halves.  It was a top-down-printed model that forced me to develop some new approaches to the ones I'd been using, and the things I learned in the process carried through to a lot of subsequent designs.  But, the most notable characteristic of the thing was the pair of gears that drove the lid.  And, you'd be excused for thinking this was just the same.

However, look at those gears.. they are not circular, and their rotational axis is not in the middle.  In fact, the effective radius of each side changes over the range of movement, meaning that the speed of movement changes, too.  Press the paddle-style handle and the lid flips back (that's another difference - there's only one lid, rather than two halves).  Those gears are actually logarithmic curves, like nautilus shells.  

That paddle handle really brings back memories of the Linkage Crate, which has always had a place in my heart.  It's another one where the speed of the push panel is different to the speed of the part it drives, though its mechanism of action is entirely different.

The end result, though, is a box that I can't stop prodding.  I love the changing gear ratio as the parts move, and it just feels cool to open :)

Printing Tips

As always with articulated models, make sure your bottom layer is dialled in, and that there are no print artifacts like stringing or overextrusion that might cause moving parts to bind together!  The orientation of the box is top-down for printing, like so:

File Location

You'll find this on Dropbox under 781 Exponent Box

(Dropbox link post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/dropbox-and-are-31697592 )

Further Thoughts

I'd been experimenting with these logarithmic gear profiles for a while, and it was really gratifying to finally come up with a design that takes advantage of their properties.  It's a also prime example of something that's far cooler in printed form than in abstract design form on a computer :)

Have fun!

xoxo

Sven.