Opening Prison Door Business Card Holder

thingiverse

I received a suggestion that I turn my Prison Door (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3515820) model into a business card holder, and the idea struck me as a ton of fun. Aside from that, it seemed mechanically interesting, so I set about to make it happen! In the end, I'm really proud of the design that I created. When you open the door, the cards fall forwards, sticking out the door-frame to be easy to grab. When you close the door, they get pushed back to an upright position (which was a bit of a challenge to get working right, because they couldn't rub against the door itself given its prison-bars nature). This is a pretty easy print; there are 3 little tabs that you'll want to cut between the top of the door and the frame (to help with that big bridge), but other than that it's good to go right off the printer. There's a -Mechanism version, which is just the door, the card holder, the door "lock" (to keep the cards from pushing it open), and the card pusher (to push the cards back upright when you close the door). The main file has brick walls all around it, fully enclosing the business cards in a more sturdy looking façade. I've got my printer all tuned for printing miniatures (most importantly, I have a 0.25 mm nozzle on it), so I only printed the -mechanical version because the full thing would be a nearly 3 day print for my machine.