Customizable simple spiral vase mode boxes

thingiverse

This is a Customizer designed to create simple boxes with rectangular, circular, elliptical, or polygonal cross-sections that must be printed in 'spiral vase' mode. This mode involves printing the entire rest of the print in one continuous movement after printing a few bottom layers, gradually increasing the Z coordinate, resulting in prints with no visible seams. The lid features a small 'lip' that makes it easier to fit on the box and provides extra grip to pull the lid off. (About 90% of the complexity in creating the OpenSCAD code went into the math to get this lip as I wanted it to be precise.) These boxes come in handy especially as an extra protective shell for cardboard boxes, or to serve as a semi-airtight container for tea boxes or other items that need to be kept dry or away from odors. To create these boxes, simply enter the inside dimensions of the box in the [customizer](/apps/customizer/run?thing_id=3751596), choose the shape and tolerance for the lid, and generate the models. Make sure to set the extrusion width in your slicer to the exact same value as you entered as wall thickness in the customizer (default: 0.60 mm, which is a good value for a 0.4 mm nozzle). To get a consistent bottom and top thickness with the wall thickness, set the number of bottom layers in your slicing program such that the spiral starts above the wall thickness (for instance, for 0.2 mm layers and a 0.6 mm wall thickness, use 3 bottom layers). If Customizer is broken on the Thingiverse website, [here are instructions](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2812634) to run it on your own computer. This is recommended anyway if you want to be able to enter the box dimensions accurately down to 0.1 mm. If you want stronger boxes with multiple perimeters, you can also print the boxes in normal mode by setting infill to 0% and no top layers. The advantage of spiral vase mode is that it has no seams which makes the boxes look very nice, particularly circular ones. The optimal tolerance depends on how tight you want the lid to be and the accuracy of your printer. You will probably need a slightly higher tolerance for elliptical or polygonal boxes to get the same lid tightness as for rectangular ones. Mind that only the lid model varies if you change the tolerance, so if the tolerance proves too tight or sloppy, you only need to generate and print a new lid with a different tolerance. All example models are made for a wall thickness of 0.6 mm.