One of the other things I like to do is help out at conventions. The other day I got a message from the person in charge of the Green Room asking if I could print something out they’d found on Thingiverse to store the tea bags and sugar in for the guests. Of course, I couldn’t leave it at that and after a bit more of a chat got their list of requirements and some dimensions of the tea bags to be stored.
In the end there were a variety of sizes, so I decided to just make it fit the largest of them which turns out to be Twinings at 65mm x 75mm. Along with the bags there were also various sticks of sugar to store, so with the dimensions of those set to 82mm I had all the details I needed. Oh, and a lid to make it easier to transport would be a nice extra!
Cracking out FreeCAD, my current preferred CAD package, I put the dimensions into a spread sheet and started drawing things out. I went for four compartments to store the bags, and three for the sugars (brown, white, and sweetner). The sugars even got a nice big fillet along one edge to make things easier to get out when you get to the last few.
I of course had to do the lid too. The overall size of the box I made so that the tea bags would stick out of the top, so I made the lid have recesses to prevent them getting squashed too much, and a lip around the outside for it to sit on.
Once I was happy with the design, I exported the files as STL and started printing. Total print time was a couple of days. I did have to redo the lid, seeing as I forgot to take tolerances into account and the first one was an *extremely* tight fit! A quick adjustment to take 0.2mm off the inside and the second print of the lid was perfect.
Overall the print came out really well. A few artifacts and some very slight lifting on the corners due to it being such a big flat piece but nothing major and its definitely fit for purpose.
I still need a lot of practice at CAD. This just happened to be right within my current skill level so good practice. The STL files are available on thingiverse, and I’ll also make the CAD files available on our store.