Milk Crate, 3 inch ID

thingiverse

A replica of that staple of dairy deliveries and dorm room decor, the milk crate! I made this object as a design challenge for myself, as I thought it would be interesting to take something that was originally designed for injection molding (with all the voids and lattices that keep it strong but minimize the amount of plastic needed) and convert to a model suited for FDM 3D printing. Thinking about the size I wanted to make the crate, I thought of a traditional use for it, to store records! And I recalled a product from the early 80s called "Chu-Bops", little 3" album replicas with bubble gum records inside and original album artwork from popular bands like Elvis, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. What a perfect pairing! Miniature records and miniature milk crates! However I don't have any Chu-Bops right now (debating how much they are worth to me before I pull the trigger on an eBay auction), and I wanted to print out a milk crate to see how well it prints, so I scaled down the file to fit SD cards. Frankly, there was a lot of cleanup needed, as a lot of the voids were filled with support material that was tedious to remove and left a lot of bits and blobs. I think the 3" ID version will be easier to deal with. I'll post a photo when I make one of those.