Japanese Puzzle Box

thingiverse

This is a simple Japanese puzzle box model. It takes 10 steps to open the box. Instructions I've heard about the boxes from one of my colleagues and decided to make a printable model. The instructions here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bruce.viney/The%20Matchbox%20T-plans.pdf were simple enough to make a printable model. The other thing the box was useful for is to try the multicolor printing on my 2 extruder modded Mendel ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16523 ). There are files for 2 different types of the box. One is for the single color version (Matchbox.stl has all pieces on one plate or you can use the STLs for individual pieces) and another one is for 2 color printing (MatchboxColor_base.stl for the base color, MatchboxColor_insert.stl for the pattern). If you'd like to print a single color version, print the box, then glue pieces 4,6 and 7 to make the box itself. After that clean up the sliding panels and slide them in according to the instructions in the URL ( http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bruce.viney/The%20Matchbox%20T-plans.pdf ). For printing in 2 colors I use skeinforge to generate "penultimate" gcode for both, base and the pattern objects. Then a script (addcolor.pl) is used to insert the gcode for pattern layers into gcode for the matching layers of the base object. The pattern layers are prefixed and suffixed with the extruder change commands. The major problem for me when printing with 2 extruders in PLA was leaking from the "standby" extruder while the other one is printing. Using the patern layer prefix/suffix files to do extra retract helped a bit with that problem. ABS doesn't flow that easily and works much better here (leaving aside its usual problems like warping).