Desiccant Box - Customizable | Circle Pattern

Desiccant Box - Fully Customizable | Circle Pattern

This model is a fully customizable box with a slide-top lid that is meant to hold desiccant beads (but it can also be used for any other application that requires regularly-spaced holes in a box).

 

This model uses circle patterns. To use rectangle patterns, check out this model: https://makerworld.com/en/models/779864#profileId-716840

Features:

• Highly customizable (you can change nearly all aspects including box size, thickness, rotation and offset of holes, hole size, padding, whether or not a side has holes, etc.).
• The holes auto-center to the available space
• Slide-top lid keeps the beads in place and is easy to remove when beads need to be dried

Sample Patterns

Here is a sample of the many patterns you can create using the customize button (note that some are for the rectangle pattern available at this link):

 

The included print profile has a few different box sizes and patterns that are hopefully inspiration for customization.

How to Customize

Click the “Customize” button above (near the print profile list). You can then change the appropriate parameters to fit your needs. Each parameter is (hopefully) self-explanatory, but here is a summary of the terms used:

• Vertical/Horizontal gap width is the size of the gap between the circular cutouts. Vertical means the gap is vertical - this is the space to the left and right of each circle. Horizontal means the gap is horizontal - this is the space on the top and bottom of each row of circles.
• Hole padding is how much space to leave from the outer walls (thickness) before starting the holes
• Hole offset is how much to offset each row of holes. This a percentage value from 0.0-1.0. If it is set at 0.5, then row 2 will be 50% offset from row 1. 0.0 and 1.0 look exactly the same.
• There are 4 toggles - three determine which sides should have holes (defaults to all sides having holes). The fourth determines if the finger grip in the lid should be included.

Printing

I used standard 0.2mm layer height settings with gyroid infill instead of grid. Both PLA and PETG have worked well. If your boxes will be put in a hot place I recommend PETG. I haven't done too much experimentation with print profiles - if you find settings that work better feel free to leave them in the comments and I will add them to the default print profile.

 

While I have had no issues printing any of the variations, if you do start to have issues, slowing down the print speed should help with the smaller vertical features.

Durability/Long-term Use

I have been using PLA versions of these boxes (at varying sizes) for a few weeks without issues. The lids become more loose over time (they start out very stiff), but it has not been a problem yet. If you are worried about the lids sliding open then I recommend a single rubber band to keep the lid closed.

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Attribution

I started with the slide-top box at this link (MIT license) and redesigned it to produce this model.