Ribbon Basket

Hey there, wonderful people!

Is it still papercraft if it's made of printed plastic? Probably not :P But I do love taking those papercraft ideas and bringing them into the printing space.

Originally, this design was all about using decorative strips to give the suggestion of weaving, but that led to actual weaving. Now these box walls are comprised solely of thin printed strips woven together, then secured by a collar at the top.

The result is a very light, box with a craft sensibility.

There are three sizes: 3x3, 4x4, and 5x5, which require increasing amounts of build area on the printer!

Printing and Assembly

The base of the box prints as a central square with ribbons extending out from each side. These get folded upwards, ready for the horizontal ribbons... which are actually square loops printed in vase mode with no bottom layers. So, just a single-walled loop. The vertical ribbons are woven past each loop as they're added, until all the loops are in place.

Depending on how much friction your prints have (mine were in a fairly grabby matte filament), you might need to give the vertical ribbons some help moving upwards while you push the horizontal loops down. You'll know it's about right when the tab at the top of the ribbon can fold over.

(Side note: For the 5x5 version, I ended up gluing the tabs down during assembly, purely because I kept accidentally pulling them free when working on adjacent ribbons.)

Once all the tabs are folded over, you can carefully work the collar over the top, and then it's all done!

Print Description

This is all designed with 0.2mm layers and 0.4mm line width in mind, and the top collar will probably not fit well on a print that deviates too far from that!

Print styles for each component:

Top collar is a regular print, nothing unusual.

The base is a regular print with 0.2mm layer height. Check the slicer preview and make sure things look sensible - you might want to change the top/bottom layer pattern if the toolpath isn't filling things in neatly.

The ribbons are vase mode prints with no bottom layers.

Print Dimensions

• The 3x3 version requires 178mm x 178mm on the print bed
• The 4x4 version requires 234mm x 234mm on the print bed
• The 5x5 version requires 291mm x 291mm on the print bed

All versions are 0.6mm tall.

Supports Needed?

Not at all!  Designed for straightforward printing!

Scalability

The main issue with scaling will be the collar, which could be problematic if scaled too far from its starting point. It's worth a try, though! :)

Print Orientation

The base prints right-way-up in regular mode. The collar prints upside-down in regular mode. The ribbon loops print right-way-up in vase mode (or simply in zero-infill, no bottom layers, single-wall slicing mode)

Further Thoughts

The print size of the base gets fast quickly as we scale up. Since we're making cubes, here, adding a ribbon to the side means extending the length of the ribbons by one ribbon-width too, and all those things add up. But maybe there's a way to make those ribbons attach neatly to the base separately, which would allow for much bigger versions!

Happy printing!
xoxo
Sven.

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465 Ribbon Basket