This page is outdated and will no longer be updated. The new home of this model is now on GitHub. Any updates will only be available there.

This is a Customizer for making simple boxes of any dimensions with a rectangular, circular, elliptical, or polygonal cross-section, that must be printed in ‘spiral vase’ mode (spiralize outer contour, single outline corkscrew, or whatever your particular slicing program calls it). This is a mode where, after printing a few bottom layers, the entire rest of the print is performed in one continuous movement that gradually increases the Z coordinate. This produces prints with no visible seams.

The lid has a little ‘lip’ that makes it easier to fit it on the box, and also provides some extra grip to pull the lid off. (About 90% of all the complexity of making the OpenSCAD code went into the maths to get this lip as I wanted it to be.)

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 things that need to be kept dry or away from odors.

Just enter the inside dimensions of the box in the customizer, 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 bottom and top thickness that is consisten 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 (again) on the Thingiverse website, here are instructions 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, of course 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.