How to make a plastic film box
There's a matter that for some has been rounding my mind: some packing puzzles
are too much nice for putting them into a wooden box, even the nicest one. I like to see the puzzle itself on my
shelves.
Making a glass box is beyond my abilities. I've made a couple of them in Plexiglas
being the results truly ok. Thinking in a cheaper a quicker to craft solution, I
found a forgotten box of transparency film for photocopiers 0.1 mm thick.
After some tests a first design appeared, that is satisfactory for me so far.
Using AutoCAD I made some sketches and the things looks enough good.
When I was going to make film boxes for some dozens of puzzles I thought that the
task must be a little bit more automatic.
Click here to
see a diagram.
The diagram shown should not need more explanations that: a) black continuous lines
are cutting lines, and b) dashed blue lines are folding lines.
I also made a AutoLISP script that ask for the three dimensions of the box it does
all the rest. For those not very familiar with AutoLISP you must follow this steps
to use the macro:
copy fldbox.lsp (zipped) into the folder support of your AutoCad
installation folder.
- run AutoCAD
- issue the Command:
(load"fldbox") [double quotes]
- execute the Command:
fldbox
- type the three answers to the prompts [size in mm]
- the box will be automatically drawn
- plot the drawing with 1:1 ratio between plotted mm and drawing units
I prefer to plot the design on paper and the I fix a film onto it using some points
of glue on the corners. After this I cut the film using a cutter and a guiding
plate.
A trick. In order to make folding easier and more accurate, all cuts a increased
a millimeter pass the intersections.
The next step is to keep an eye around and reverse engineer some box I found there filled
with... puzzles? I don't think!
Ideas will be welcome!
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