Modular California Job Case for letterpress printers

thingiverse

Human: Edit: added source files by request. For clarity - this design references both letterpress printing and 3D printing. This is my first design for Thingiverse, so feel free to critique accordingly. Letterpress is hundreds of years old, but pressing inked type into paper is still going strong in craft, hobby, and fine stationery houses worldwide. 3D printing is an excellent addition to the craft because most of our tools in the letterpress trade are no longer produced! Letterpress printers store cast metal type in a wooden case, one case per font. Because of their relative scarcity, these wooden cases cost upwards of $40 each and are usually in pretty bad shape. Many of them have sadly been repurposed as coffee tables! In this particular build, I modeled the case after the venerable full-size California Job Case. The right-most 1/3 of the case is used for capital letters and some punctuation. The left 2/3 of the case is for lower-case types and the rest of the punctuation. If you are not a letterpress printer, these models are still a great design to use when storing anything small - hardware especially, because you get to decide how big the tray is and how it's laid out. Now back to 4,000-year-old printing and the storage of cast metal type: For a layout diagram (what goes where) and more information you never wanted to know about case lays, see: http://www.alembicpress.co.uk/#selc Because there are so many types of printer's case layouts, I wanted to make this modular - with the cleats that hold each box together being completely interchangeable and similarly spaced regardless of direction or layout. I'm up to version 7, but I do see there's additional work to be done with tolerances. I used a simple nomenclature to identify each size box: 1x1 | 1.25" X 2.06" 1x2 | 1.25" X 4.12" 2x2 | 2.5" X 4.12" 2x3 | 2.5" X 6.18" 1x2C| 1.25" X 3.43" (for capital letters) If you really do want to print a full California Job Case, the census of parts is as follows: 1x1 - print 42 1x4 - print 11 2x4 - print 14 3x4 - print 1 Caps - print 21 The result is a form factor that will fit in a standard empty job case that does not have the usual warren of wooden divisions, or you can just build a frame out of 1/2" basswood. The final assembly is tight enough that there is no real need to place the boxes on a base, the tray can be used as-is. Edit: The "standard" full case size, as much as anything is standardized in Letterpress: 16-1/2" deep x 32" wide x approximately 1-1/2" tall. Mike Moore LetterKraftPress