Foldy Box (Patreon)

Howdy, wonderful people!

Me and geometry, best friends forever!  I get caught up a lot in dodecahedra, cuboctahedra and more elaborate forms whose names I have to look up on Wikipedia to have any chance of getting them correct, but it's important not to overlook the joys of the humble cube!

Now, this cube is just a little thing - it'll sit neatly in the palm of your hand, and it'll fit unfolded neatly on most printer beds.  Folded up, the cube is about 44mm across.  But let's talk about the interesting parts!

The Foldy Cube folds together one face at a time with interlocking features on the matching edges, with the last edge being the key connection that holds everything together.  The faces can't come apart until that one critical connection is released!  That particular edge has been furnished with a place for either magnets to be glued in or a piece of cord to run through and thus keep things closed.

If you look carefully you'll see some dovetail-style joins, though they're on strange angles because the edges come together via rotation, so it's all made up of curves that slot into each other.

Print Description

This is an articulated, print-in-place model that needs no supports.  However, you'll want to make sure your first layer is nice and neat and that you don't have any print issues like stringing or overextrusion that might cause moving parts to bind together!

There are two sets of files - one for regular single material printing, and others for multimaterial - see below..

Multimaterial vs Single Material

Files are provided to make multimaterial printing straightforward, and if you have a multimaterial setup like a Prusa MMU, Mosaic Palette or Bambu AMS then I'm going to assume you already know how to use those files!

However, this model is also intended to take advantage of filament swapping on a single-material machine - swapping colours before the top of the hex grid will give a nice contrast. 

Optional Magnets

There's room for two 6x3mm cylindrical magnets to hold the Foldy Box closed!  They're entirely optional, though, and you can just slide something through the holes instead.

Print Dimensions

The Foldy Box occupies 120mm x 169mm on the print bed and is 9mm tall.

Supports Needed?

Not at all!  Designed for straightforward printing!

Scalability

Things will get looser or tighter with scale.  The main risk with increasing size is that at some point the dovetail style joins will be loose enough to let the sides fall open!

Print Orientation

The Foldy Box prints inside-down, folded open like so:

File Location

You'll find this one at at 635 Foldy Box

Link to dropbox post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31697592

Further Thoughts

I really like the way that three-dimensional polyhedra can decompose into two-dimensional polygons like this, and it would be really cool to try this same approach with more elaborate forms.  However, the big issue is that as the number of sides increases, so does the room needed on the print bed, and so either the polygons would need to be very small or the form will need to be broken up into multiple parts and joined together...

Happy Folding! :D

xoxo

Sven.