Parametric spring battery holder

thingiverse

I really like the style of "High current 18650 holders with integrated spring" that makers design, such as the example linked. The only downside is that they require modifying brass standoffs to work as contacts. Enif came up with a brilliant solution to this with his Flexing Battery Holders, which use a couple of wraps of wire for the contacts instead. They have a few other downsides, though, specifically that the wraps are tricky to get to, and the customization parameters don't necessarily work the same way you expect them to. So, adapting my improvement on chrisspen's flat spring generator, I rebuilt enif's flexing battery holders to include my new desired functionality. I would like to believe that the modifications I made to this thing are extensive enough that enif's holders can be considered an inspiration instead of this being a derivative of them. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong. Considerations: -YXC's holders feature a longer spring, which is more "springy" than enif's. Using this design makes the holders more tolerant, and it also frees up space directly behind the contact points, making threading the wires easier. -All curves except for the springs have been replaced with flat or 45-degree angles. Bevels tend to print better than chamfers anyway, and I like the industrialized look that results. -Related to the above, the overall generation function has been heavily simplified, and should be easier to customize to your individual needs if necessary. -Picking a battery type is now easier than ever before: simply uncomment the call to the appropriate generator function. The first parameter sets the number of side-by-side boxes to generate, and the second sets the number of cells in series in each box. No digging to the bottom of the file and collapsing stuff to find what you're looking for. I haven't tried, but you probably want to print these in PETG and use fairly beefy wires if you're planning to use them for what I actually designed them for. PLA filament will inevitably flow around the battery in the holder, losing contact, and if the batteries get warm during use, the cells will inevitably soften and very likely collapse. Please note that if you generate the CR123A cell, you will very probably want to adjust the number of bends in the spring, as the default of 7 produces a degenerate spring that reintroduces several of the problems I tried to fix with chrisspen's generator. I recommend using 4 for that one, but hey, maybe you'll come up with a better solution!