CCG deck box with geared pivoting lid

thingiverse

There are some excellent deck boxes on thingiverse, but I thought, you know... they aren't complex and pointless enough. So in the spirit of the game of thrones intro map thingy I thought I'd add some gears and a rack and pinion lift system and a couple of other nifty things. Here it is in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z8l1qjhh3E Instructions There's quite a few moving parts to this one. You'll need to print one of each of the 8 STL files. The scad file uses the printable rack ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11642 ) by devijvers and of course the ubiquitous involute gear library ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3575 ) by Greg Frost. At the moment I haven't glued anything, it's just pressed together. The SCAD file includes a parameter for printing tolerance currently set to 0.2mm. It's likely your printer is better tuned than mine, so you may not need it. The scad file is (theoretically) fully parametric and has instructions on how to change (for example) the x, y and z dimensions of the cards and a heap of other values. A couple of the attached images show how the box is put together. The main things are: 1) The two sets of top (rotating sections) are connected by a plastic "key" (little oblongs of plastic) to hold them together. 2) put the "lift platform" into the two rack sections and put the racks in place before mounting the top sections. You need to make sure the teeth of the gears and the rack are nice and clean and mesh well. 3) There are 6 hinges that allow the side pieces to move outwards when the tops are rotated. I used dressmakers pins as the axles for those hinges. Cut the heads off them and push them through and bend each end over so they stay in place. There's probably a better solution, but because my printers not so well tuned, the pins were a firm fit and worked well. Oh also, two of the stls wouldn't slice properly with slicr (3 and 6) but they did slice ok with skeinforge. Update: Added a base, updated SCAD file to reflect this, updated "full exploded" image to include the new base. (deck_box_8.stl) Update 2: I changed the name from 'unnecessarily complex mtg deck box' because it wasn't clear to a number of people that 'unnecessarily complex' was supposed to denote the over-the-top design idea rather than the construction. And of course it can be used for any ccg not just mtg.