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Jun 4, 2015

Battery Box keeps those pesky button batteries

I've got lots of random electronic parts laying around in drawers and organizers, but by far the most annoying are those button batteries. I'm always worried that having them loose will cause them to make contact with other conductive parts or each other, shorting them or draining them.
NOTE: If you're interested in reading about a printing discovery I made during this project, read my other post called "Speed Up 3D Printing" - which could have been titled: "How I made my 3D Printing 62% Faster".

The Need

I haven't seen a good mini-organizer for storing these, so I figured I'd "invent" one (yeah - I use that term very loosely - as it's not exactly an invention, more like a custom thingy). The Button Battery Box (tm, patent pending, not) will store bunches of button batteries safely and efficiently. I'm of course starting with a size that works well for the batteries I have laying around - the LR44 - and then I'll move on to the CR2032.

The 3D Model Solution

This was a pretty easy model to create. The only real challenge which took some experimentation (and could use more) was the box cover, which I wanted to attach securely. The method I used was not the optimal one. but that's typical to discover a better way of doing something after you do it not so well.

The method I used was to create the outer container box first, then to use slats to break up the main compartment into equally sized tiny compartments for one battery each. This was tedious to get the measurements right. The only benefit to this method was that it made it easy to have the outer walls of the box have a different (higher) height than the inner walls.

The method I SHOULD have used (which I have used in other applications) is to create one single battery tiny compartment and then replicate it and put them all together to form a larger box of individual spaces. While that would have required me to build up the side walls separately, it would have been easier than setting up the slats in perfect separation from each other (although 123D does have a simple method for that too).


Next step will be to create a similar box for other parts - then to make a holder for all these boxes that looks like a miniature dresser :)


1 comment:

  1. I don't suppose you'd share the STL file? Having a box for button batts sounds pretty nifty.

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