Stackable Loose Tea Dispensers

These stackable tea dispensers hold 25 teaspoons of your favorite loose tea and dispense them one teaspoon at a time with each pull of the sliding “drawer”. The last cross-section photo show how the slider cavity fills up when the slider is pushed in and then empties itself out when pulled forward. 

There are a few options for how to stack these side-by-side. There is a version with a dovetail boss on one side and a dovetail groove on the other to lock the units together. (For a neater look, I've included end units without either the slot or boss. ) And I've also included a version without the dovetails altogether. 

The stack of units still doesn't weigh much and can slide around some, so I've also included an optional tray that the individual units or stack of units snaps into. This tray can be stuck down to your cabinet shelf or a separate board. The tray holds 3 dispensers, but you can scale it up in the Z direction to hold any number of dispensers. (Use a Z scale factor of N/3, when N is the number of dispensers.

Note: This is updated from the original version posted – the chute at the bottom of the bin has been eliminated and the tea now dumps out of the front end of the slider directly into your tea ball.

Printing
I printed all pieces in PLA with 0.2mm layers. No supports are needed, but note that the main bin and the slider both have built-in support structures that break-away easily after printing.

Pro tip: Orient the bin on your print bed so that the overhanging foot is pointing into your fan's airflow. This will produce a cleaner looking overhang.